Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) Krondorfer et al., German theologians’ autobiographies.
b) Carter, Martyrdom in Melanesia

2) Archival information: The Meissen Library, Durham

3) Journal articles:

a) Gailus, An ardent Nazi’s career – Pastor M Ziegler
b) Linday, Bonhoeffer, Yad Vashem and and the Church

4) Reader’s response to R.Steigman-Gall’s The Holy Reich

1a) Björn Krondorfer, Katharina von Kellenbach, Norbert Reck, Mit Blick auf die Täter. Fragen an die deutsche Theologie nach 1945. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2006 ISBN- 13: 978-3-579-052274 317 pp.

Björn Krondorfer and Katharina von Kellenbach, who teach at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, have done much to promote the cause of Christian-Jewish reconciliation in the German context. For Germans, far more than in other countries, the prerequisite for such a task is the willingness to engage in Vergangenheitsbewältigung – in this case with the long history of German intolerance, prejudice and persecution of the Jewish people, which culminated in the Holocaust. As is well known, such attempts to come to terms with the Nazi past after 1945 were only reluctantly and fitfully undertaken, and are indeed not yet complete. What role did the churches play? What theologies were preached and practised? In Krondorfer’s view, the eminent scholars and preachers of the Evangelische Kirche failed in their duty to set an example of public repentance and contrition, or to lead their audiences towards a new theological understanding of Judaism and its relationship to Christianity. His questions about German post-1945 theology are, in fact, much more directed to the theologians themselves and their own personal failure to adopt any public stance out of which a new beginning could be undertaken.

Krondorfer backs up his challenging contentions by examining the autobiographies written by German theologians since 1945. approximately 35 in all, in order to see how they undertook their own coming to terms with the past. His findings are astonishing – and deeply disappointing. He shows that, with only a few exceptions, this entire group of theologians wrote their autobiographies with apologetic purposes. They demonstrate how decisively their minds and careers were fashioned by the dominant nationalist and racialist ideologies of early 20th century Germany. Equally disappointing was their failure, even after the crimes of the Holocaust were well known, to engage in any confession of Christian complicity, or of repentance or reparation towards any of the victims of German aggression, especially the Jews. Instead the key notes of these writers are self-justification and self-exculpation. To be sure, after 1945, Martin Niemoeller publicly, in numerous sermons and speeches, acknowledged his own and Germany’s guilt. His call for repentance was, however, strongly opposed and bitterly resented. And even he, in later years, took a very generous attitude towards the earlier misdemeanours of many of his compromised clerical colleagues in the church of Hessen-Nassau. Not until we come to the youngest post-war generation do we find a different tone.

Krondorfer divides his theologian-authors into different cohorts, according to their ages. He persuasively argues that these men (almost all were men) gained in their youth a set of political ideas which influenced their subsequent lives. He begins with the oldest and distinguished bishop, Theophil Wurm, born in 1868, whose memoirs were written when he was over eighty, but which still reflected the values he had learnt under the Kaiser’s rule. Wurm and his generation (and his sector of German Christianity) suffered the terrible shock of the German defeat of 1918. As conservatives, their world fell apart. They soon came to blame, not their misguided rulers, but the victorious Allies. The Treaty of Versailles very quickly became the symbol of how Germany was being oppressed, and they themselves victimized. The tone of self-pity, or preoccupation with their own fortunes, runs throughout. The rise of Hitler could then be explained as the result of Allied vindictiveness, and his struggle to regain Germany’s place in the world, justified. Germany’s defeat in the second war could also be seen as a recurrence of German victimization. Wurm was one of those who loudly protested Allied occupation policies after 1945, and could believe these moves were prompted by a deliberate attempt to starve the German race out of existence. He led the vocal chorus of self-pitying lamentation about the hardships suffered by Germans. Not a word about the far greater sufferings imposed by Germans on the many other peoples of Europe, let alone on the Jews.

For a slightly younger cohort, Krondorfer subjects the autobiographies of Walter Künneth and Helmut Thielicke, neither of whom could be accused of pro-Nazi attitudes, to an insightful but biting analysis. Here too he finds that the desire to escape from any acknowledgment of guilt leads to an evasiveness, when the actual fate of the Jews is hardly mentioned at all. Neither of these men showed a willingness to speak out about German guilt or to say words of sympathy for the Germans’ victims. Instead their concern is all for the suffering Germans, for whom they show a commendable pastoral care, but whose crimes they seek to downplay or relativize. So too their emphasis is on the fate of the bombed-out or the expellees from the east, not on the concentration camp inmates so brutally mistreated or willfully murdered. In the end, Krondorfer affirms, it is the tone of self-exculpatory rectitude which is so irritating. He closes his essay with a expression of indignation and exasperation: “The language used in these theologians’ autobiographies lacks experimental liveliness; the contents show only too clearly an unwillingness to reveal the whole personality. What is missing is any sign that these authors felt anguish or that they experienced moments of agitation, chaos, fragmentation, questioning, searching, exposure, nakedness, incompleteness, blundering, face-to-face honesty, intimacy, or vulnerability. When we of later generations read these polished and orderly self-justifications, we can only wish that, in our post-Auschwitz world, some theologian at some point would be ready to stutter or stammer a genuine apology and a meaningful confession of guilt.”

Norbert Reck takes the same approach in his evaluation of the autobiographies of Catholic theologians. The older cohort, such as Rahner, Fries, Schmaus and Guardini, ascribes the political and social evils of their day to the general abandonment of the church and its teachings, which had set in a hundred years or more ago and now found its climax in Hitler’s rule. This convenient way of blaming Nazism and its attendant crimes on much wider or even universal phenomena amounts to a skillful evasion. Their remedy consisted of a call to return to the faith, and to rebuild the church’s dogmatic base. Needless to say there was no readiness to deal with the tradition of Catholic antisemitism, or to examine the church’s own complicity in Nazi crimes. The same can be seen in the memoirs of Joseph Ratzinger, the present Pope Benedict XVI. He depicts his early years as living in an enclosed Catholic milieu which sought to isolate itself, as far as possible, from any involvement with the Nazi regime. When obliged to participate, e.g. in the Hitler Youth or the Volkssturm, this was a forced obedience not a willing compliance. Only younger theologians such as Johann Baptist Metz began to recognize the need for a theological revision towards Judaism “after Auschwitz”, based on an honest admission of the church’s failures. But he only went so far, and it was left up to a layman, Georg Denzler, to undertake a more systematic and hard-hitting critique.

Katharine von Kellenbach has used the records of prison chaplains to study how the question of guilt was handled amongst the convicted Nazi war criminals. With one exception, these men refused to acknowledge any such contrition. To the end they maintained that they had only obeyed orders, had done their duty and served their country loyally. Any wider sense of moral or political obligation was completely absent. Instead they saw themselves as the victims of a vindictive foreign justice. How to bring these men to a different state of mind, or how to convey a Christian message of forgiveness, without encouraging these criminals’ sense of self-pity, was a demanding and difficult assignment for these chaplains.

For the forgiveness of sins, neither the Catholic nor the Protestant tradition requires a direct connection to, or reparation for, the victim. By contrast, the Jewish liturgical practice foresees deliberate actions of reconciliation between offender and victim, especially in the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But any such action is disputed by those in the Protestant tradition who believe that confession can only be made to God, and only God can forgive. Because God’s grace is so abundant, the sinner will not suffer the rejection he might well receive if he approached his victim. But, as Bonhoeffer recognized, such private confession can easily give way to self-deception, self-pity and evasion.

Genuine repentance also requires visible action. In the case of the former Nazis, or of the German churches, such Sühnezeichen have been few and belated. There is still evidence of nationalist resentment against any real solidarity with the Nazis’ victims, especially Jews, Poles and Russians. By contrast, the German churches readily enough supported large-scale measures to reintegrate Nazi criminals into post-war society, and by such “normalization” to help cover over their pasts. Christian theology, such as the parable of the Prodigal Son, has often been misused to give former Nazis the benefit of every doubt. Christian loving-kindness was contrasted to the Old Testament, i.e. Jewish, demands for punitive judgments. Reconciliation can this become cheapened, if there is no real sign of repentance by the sinner, or if only the victims are expected to forgive and forget.

As Katharina von Kellenbach shows, these questions and controversies continue to resound through all German attempts to construct a new era in Christian-Jewish dialogue. All three authors, in fact, are saddened by the evidence of continuing prejudice against the victims of society, and are evidently concerned that the present-day resourcefulness of German theology may not suffice to prevent a repetition of the excesses of the previous century.

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1b) Richard A.Carter, In search of the Lost. The death and life of seven peacemakers of the Melanesian Brotherhood, Norwich, Canterbury Press 2006, 242 pp.

Richard Carter is a young priest from England who went out in 1990 to the Solomon Islands in the south-west Pacific Ocean, and subsequently served as Chaplain to the Melanesian Brotherhood, based on the island of Guadacanal. This Brotherhood is a vibrant community of eager and dedicated young men who are committed to short-term monastic vows, and undertake evangelistic and service tasks for the hundreds of rural, often isolated, villages where most of the people live. Carter’s evocative description of their witness is drawn from his diaries and letters, and provides a vivid picture of how this vigorous, though little-known, branch of the Anglican Communion has sought to present the challenge of Christian discipleship in difficult and often tragic circumstances.

Carter’s period of service coincided with a rapid escalation of communal violence in the Solomon Islands, particularly on Guadacanal, where both the capital, Honiara, and the headquarters of the Brotherhood, at Tabalia, are situated. This ethnic conflict and near civil war led to outbursts of wanton destruction of property which ruined the nation’s infrastructure, and resulted in a marked economic decline. The whole public sector closed down because there was no money to pay any salaries. Much overseas aid was withheld, and no secure climate for future investment could be cultivated. Gangs of unemployed and discontented youth were recruited and armed with weapons to carry out communal reprisals, and there were reports of atrocities committed on both sides. The police and government authorities were suspected of corruption and partisanship.

The Christian communities sought to counter this situation by a resolute commitment to peace and reconciliation. At the suggestion of the government, the Melanesian Brothers joined a disarmament campaign by offering to collect and destroy any guns they could persuade the villagers to hand over. Several thousand guns were in fact collected by the Brothers and dumped into the sea. They recognized that, to succeed, they needed to preserve the strictest impartiality and not to be seen as deriving favours from one faction or the other. But it was not enough. Too often, each side suspected that giving up their weapons would jeopardize their safety. The Brothers were accused of political naiveté. They were warned that they were being involved in situations of double-dealing and deceit. It was clear that the chief casualty of the conflict was the trust and respect which had formerly united the whole island society. Instead fear and suspicion were rampant. The ethnic antagonism was brutal and destructive, and its effects were noticeable on all sides. Despite the courage and bravery with which the Christian groups faced the tension, they were obliged to witness terror at first hand. They still live with painful memories of unforgettably evil events. It called for all the resources, biblical and spiritual, at their command to offset these sickening horrors.

One of the ways in which the Brothers sought to combat the loss of identity and alienation, and to prevent the disintegration of the village societies, was to stage a series of pilgrimages with religious dramas. These plays, drawn from the Gospel stories, were translated into the vernacular Solomon Island dialects, and performed by a large cast drawn from the Brothers and Novices. Richard Carter himself arranged and directed these performances in terms relevant to Melanesia. They all contained elements essential to powerful drama: simplicity, conflict, a sense of danger and a trenchant presentation of Christian teachings. They proved to be immensely popular, but their message of peace and reconciliation was too often outweighed by the atmosphere of tension and communal strife.

One of the most stubborn and defiant insurgents had his well-fortified encampment on the remote Weather, or western, coast of the island. In March 2003 one of the Brothers attempted to reach him with a message of peace, but was taken captive. On Easter Sunday, news arrived in Tabalia that he had been tortured and murdered. Six more Brothers who went to rescue his body were in turn captured as so-called “prisoners of war”. In the Brothers’ headquarters, an agonizing period of waiting for their release followed. The risk of sending any more men out to the danger zone appeared to be too great. They could only pray.

For two months there was an ominous silence. The warlord’s forces gathered momentum. The police and military authorities lacked the resources to overcome the rebellion or rescue the hostages. Villages where the Brothers had recently performed their plays were sacked and burnt to the ground. Several innocent villagers were deliberately tortured and put to death. Back in Tabalia, the Brothers’ paranoia grew by the day. It was a relentless spiral. Inevitably the fear grew that a tragedy had occurred which was too great for them to bear.

At the beginning of August, these fears were officially confirmed. The six young Brothers who went out in faith in search of their brother had all been murdered in cold blood three months earlier. The shock united the whole community in a bond of traumatized sadness. They sat up through the night recalling stories of these slain Brothers and trying to come to terms with the enormity of their loss. Messages of support and condolence poured in from around the world. Slowly, over the next few days and weeks, the realization grew that the martyrdom of these seven Brothers would be a signal to the world that Christian courage and sacrifice were not in vain, and that their deaths were in fact life-giving to the wider church. In death, the seven Brothers, as Carter says, “are a constant, aching reminder of the integrity, values and love which alone can bring hope to the world”.

In October and November 2003, the remains of the seven men were brought to the Brothers’ mother house in Tabalia, and buried in the special burial ground there. Nine months later, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, himself came to pay his respects. He asked to be admitted as a Companion of the Melanesian Brotherhood, and then planted a kaui tree amongst the colourful groves of bougainvillea and frangipani which surround the Brothers’ final resting place. The plaque commemorating his visit bears the inscription that their faith should be the seed that yields a harvest of peace.

It is readily apparent that the purpose of this book is not only to make the story of these heroic Brothers’ sacrifice known to the wider world, but also to enable Richard Carter to come to terms with his own anguished grief at the loss of his well-beloved companions. It was also apparent that, to achieve these aims, his period of service in Melanesia should come to an end. He left the Solomon Islands in 2005 to return to his original family in Britain, and, with their help, to write what Archbishop Williams commends as “a most truly evangelical book”. Not only does its inspiring message effectively present the vision of the Brotherhood, but it also provides a valuable record of this troubled period of the history of the Anglican Church in Melanesia.

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2) The Meissen Library, Durham Cathedral, UK

(I include the foillowing article written by the Appeal Secretary since several of our colleagues may wish to take advantage of this newly-available resource.)

The Meissen Library at Durham Cathedral is the largest gathered collection in Britain of books in German on the history snd theology of the German Protestant Church, containing publicaions from the later 18th century to the present day (some 13,000 volumes). It is, however, remarkable for the breadth of its holdings across a wide range of theological disciplines, including material rarely available outside Germany. For example, it contains works in ecumenical theology, reflecting the increasing engagement of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland with other branches of the Christian Churh including the Orthodox in Europe. Such engagement was inevitable from the 18th century onwards after the major partitions of Poland, but the collection also reflects the world-wide representation of Christian mission through the agencies of those traditions now part of the EKiD. Strengths of the collection include material on the period of the “German Christian” movement, the Church in Eastern Europe after World War Two, Christian contributions to politics and society during the 19th and 20th centuries, especially material of preaching and an extensive collection of sermons. There is a section concerned with Jewish-Christian relationships both in the past and in the present-day world, and Christian understanding of Islam has a useful section. The collection is already available to readers and researchers. For access, please contact Mrs Sylvia Graham, The Cathedral Library, The College, Durham DHI 3EH, UK, or by phone at 0191 386 2489, or by e-mail meissen.library@durham.ac.uk For accommodation in Durham in a nearby College, please contact A. L.Loades@durham.ac.uk

The Library (from the former seminary at Imbshausen, together with major gifts of books by some distinguished donors) was given to the Church of England by the EKiD under the terms of the 1991 Meissen Declaration between the EKiD and the Church of England. On behalf of the Church of England, the then Dean and Chapter of Durham Cathedral agreed to house the Library as a distinct collection, but the Chapter made it clear that it did not have the funds other than for the provision of suitable accommodation for the books. Since 1997 when the library was established in the undercroft of the Cathedral deanery, a band of volunteers has worked consistently hard to shelve the books, eliminate duplicates (the sale of which has enabled us to establish a new books fund) and catalogue and enter the books on the Meissen Library’s own website. We aim to make this resource widely available, by employing a professional cataloguer to put the contents onto the on-line catalogue of Durham University, since this is by far the most effective way of increasing national and international knowledge of the collection. We would then be able to re-direct the efforts of our volunteers to sustaining opening hours and supervision of readers.

The Meissen Library Appeal

As indicated above, we want to employ a professional cataloguer, possibly part-time over a period of three years, or for a lesser period full-time, to get the catalogue on to the on-line OPAC catalogue of Durham University. The sum of GBP 80,000 should cover the cost of employment/insurance etc. The employer would be Durham Cathedral. The person appointed would be responsible to the Canon Librarian, The Revd Canon Professor David Brown FBA, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity, and to the Management Committee for the Meissen Library chaired by The Revd Alan Chesters.

The secretary of the Appeal is Professor Ann Loades CBE, Meissen Library Appeal, Durham Cathedral Library, The College, Durham DH1 3EH, U.K. Donations may be made directly to her, made payable to the Durham Cathedral Donations Meissen Library. Donors who pay UK tax may also have their donations enhanced by completing a Gift Aid form, available form All Loades as above.

3) Journal articles: a) Manfred Gailus, “Von ‘gottgläubiger’ Kirchenkämpfer Rosenbergs zum ‘christgläubigen’ Pfarrer Niemöllers. Matthes Zieglers wunderbare Wandlungen im 20 Jahrhundert,” in Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. Vol. 54, no. 11, November 2006, p. 937-973.

Manfred Gailus, who teaches at Berlin’s Technical University, has undertaken a masterly piece of detective work to uncover the career of Matthes Ziegler, a former ardent Nazi who ended up by being a ranking Pastor in the Church of Hessen-Nassau, where he was appointed through the auspices of the anti-Nazi hero, Martin Niemöller. Like so many other young men of his kind, Matthes Ziegler was caught up by the frenetic mood which greeted Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Having been born in a rural parsonage, he was intending to study theology at Greifswald, but instead switched his favours to the new political wave of enthusiasm, and was given a job by Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s chief ideologue and editor of its main newspaper. As editor of the Party’s internal monthly, the NS Monatshefte, Ziegler became an experienced journalist. But his aspirations did not stop there. When war broke out he switched his allegiance to Himmler and Bormann, and was given further propaganda assignments, such as preparing material to be used against the Catholic Church, once the “Endlösung” of the Roman pest could be launched. In 1945, as an SS officer he was automatically arrested and spent three years in detention until 1948.

But somehow or other he gained an interview with Martin Niemšller who then held the office of Church President = Bishop in Hessen-Nassau. Thanks to Niemöller, Ziegler was given permission to join the next ordination course, and subsequently was appointed to various parishes in Hessen-Nassau. He served there until retirement in 1976, all the while suppressing any embarrassing information about his past. But, in retirement, he wrote a self-serving autobiography, which was never published, but which came into Gailus’ hands and thus precipitated this investigation.

Gailus can offer no explanation for Niemöller’s surprisingly sympathetic handling of this rather unpleasant character, whose dictatorial manner and extreme right-wing opinions were still unchanged in his later years. But Gailus has pieced together all the surviving evidence from Nazi sources, and presents a devastating picture of an ambitious careerist who sought to exploit the political system for his own advantage. His memoirs in fact fully displayed the contradiction between his desire to play down his disreputable past while simultaneously boasting of his association with the Nazi “Bonzen”, Rosenberg, Darré, Heydrich, Himmler and various Gauleiter. Ziegler’s claim that he knew nothing about the crimes these men committed is hardly credible. But for years all this was hushed up. We can be grateful to Manfred Gailus for this skilful exposure.

b) Mark Lindsay, “The Righteous among the Nations”. Bonhoeffer, Yad Vashem and the Church in Toronto Journal of Theology, Vol. 22, no 1, Spring 2006, p. 23-38

For more than twenty years now, contention has reverberated over the decision of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem to deny the status of a ãrighteous Gentileä to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In the eyes of those in charge, he falls outside the scope of the definitions they established to be considered as a rescuer of Jews, while acknowledging his services in resisting the Nazi regime.

Mark Lindsay of Melbourne, Australia, examines more closely the criteria of “righteousness” in the light of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on the Beatitudes and in his later writings. According to the Yad Vashem officials, righteousnes is to be attributed to ethical acts in the face of direct danger. Religious faith is not a prerequisite. The title of righteous Gentile is awarded to individuals who rescued Jews from Nazism’s genocidal machinery, even if, in other situations, their moral probity was spotty. Oscar Schindler, for example, was a swindler and an adulterer. And evidence suggests that many rescuers were not righteous in the usual moral sense. So Yad Vashem’s definition of who receives the title is an ambivalent one.

Lindsay seeks to show that orthodox Protestantism shows a similar ambiguity. The specific ethical conduct demanded of the Christian is often undefined, and many moral situations arise where no pattern of righteousness is predictable. For Bonhoeffer, unlike most of his colleagues in the university or church, his sharply increased political awareness in the early 1930s led him to see that the real danger of Nazism demanded a raft of corporate actions in the name of justice, truth and humanity. These were not restricted solely to rescuing Jews, but could and should, result from the Christian’s faith journey, sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Such righteousness would likely lead to danger and be at great personal cost. It could, and in his case did, require perseveance to the point of martyrdom. So Bonhoeffer surely deserves the title of a Righteous Christian.

4) Reader’s response:

I would like to comment on the journal article “Was Nazism an ersatz political religion, or were Christianity and Nazism incompatible?” (February Newsletter, p. 6-7)

I welcome correction, but I get the distinct impression that most discussions of this sort have assumed that the German Lutherans and Catholics were Christians, therefore their activities show the degree of cooperation and agreement between Christianity and National Socialism. It seems to me that far too little has been said about the question of whether or not many of the German Christians were Christians in name only, not seriously dedicated to following the teachings of Christ, and in fact disobedient to the teachings of Christ, and not really Christians at all.

For example, your article said “Göring was married in church, Wilhelm Frick retained a strong commitment to Protestantism, and Hanns Kerrl, the Minister for Church Affairs, could quote the Bible by heart and was convinced that the churches and the Nazi Party were inseparable because both opposed Judaism.” Such things seem like strong arguments, but, when it comes to Goering, nowhere do Christ or the apostles say anything about church weddings. If a vicious, evil, and brutal man who clearly has not the slightest interest in the Sermon on the Mount is married in a church, this shows some kind of relationship between Naziism and the German Church – that said church might have little or nothing to do with Christ and the apostles is all too often ignored. Frick retained a strong commitment to Protestantism: did he believe that salvation was by faith alone, and that this included repentance of sin, and following the way of Christ? How many people are aware that 20th century German “Protestantism’ was vastly different from traditonal biblical protestantism, and had in fact abandoned many historic doctrines? Hanns Kerrl could quote the bible by heart – did he believe that Jesus was born of a virgin and died on the cross for the sins of the world, that he rose from the dead, that he would return as God to judge the world?

Many German Christians were far removed from the teachings of Christ and the apostles, and their support for Hitler proves only their own spiritual blindness and disobedience to Christ, not a connection between Nazism and Christianity.

Also, I have been skimming Mein Kampf recently and have made note of a number of passages where Hitler expresses deep and overt hostility toward Christianity. It seems these passages are often overlooked – if I am wrong, will be glad to know of it. I will give you a few references – forgive me if this is old hat to you.

Book 2 chapt.5: Christianity’s intolerance is fundamentally Jewish, and “positively embodies the Jewish nature.” This is the very point H.S. Chamberlain made (I have the reference in Salalah). In this passage Hitler refers to Christian intolerance with “loathing” and discusses how this philosophy filled with intolerance (Christianity) can be broken. He speaks of the spiritual terror and coercion introduced by Christianity and says it can only be broken by coercion and by terror.

Bk. 2 chapt. 2: the churches are not concerned with racial purity; sending missionaries to Africa turns healthy but primitive Africans into a “rotten brood of bastards”; that instead of missionary activity, the churches should be preaching eugenics and racial hygiene

Bk. 1 chapt. 3: both denominations are wrong on the Jewish question and hence are suitable “neither to the requirements of the nation nor to the real needs of religion.” Protestantism is hostile to antisemitism.

These are open and overt attacks on the churches, which Hitler later moderated or avoided for political reasons. No doubt he could easily explain them away as rhetorical excesses or just politics if later confronted with them.

You referred in your book to the blindness of German Christians – to what extent is that attributable to the fact that many of them had long since abandoned biblical Christianity?

Joe Keysor

With best wishes to you all for a blessed Lent
John Conway

I am pleased to send you this month two complementary reviews dealing with the attitudes of institutional Christianity, in this case the Church of Rome and the Church of England, towards Judaism and the Jewish people, especially during the traumatic years of the Second World War. I believe the comparisons are instructive. Any comments you may have will be passed on to the authors, if you so desire. Please contact me at jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Contents:

1. Book reviews

a) Brechenmacher, The Vatican and the Jews
b) Lawson The Church of England and the Holocaust

2. Journal articles:

a) Was Nazism an ersatz political religion, or were Christianity and Nazism incompatible?
b) Moses, Bonhoeffer and War theology.
c) Rein, Orthodox Church in Byelorussia

3. Book notes:

a) Cambridge History of Christianity
b) Nottmeier, Adolf von Harnack

1a) Thomas Brechenmacher, Der Vatikan und die Juden, Munich: Verlag C.H.Beck, 2005. 326 pp. ISBN 3-406-52903-8

Thomas Brechenmacher’s account of the history of the relationship between the Roman Catholic authorities and the Jews puts into a longer perspective the controversies about Catholic attitudes in the recent past, as well as the more optimistic prospects for the future. Like Gerhard Besier in his book on the Vatican and the Third Reich (reviewed here in December 2005), Brechenmacher has taken advantage of the recent opening of the Vatican archives for the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, i.e. up to 1939. But he first goes back far into the past to point out the centuries-old ambivalence which has marked Catholic attitudes towards Judaism, since at least 600 A.D. The consolidation of the Papacy’s political and territorial power in Italy led to the codification of the church’s stance on the Jews. They were to be subject to a dual Papal protection, the one sheltering them from outbursts of Christian fanaticism, the other protecting Christians from the dangers of possible conversion. Individual popes placed their emphasis on one or other aspect, which meant in fact that the Jews were long kept in humiliating subjection, but were never expelled from the Papal lands. These policies were justified by an elaborate theology based on the Pauline epistles, seeing the Jews as the witness-people to God’s magnanimous creation, modified only by practical needs in local circumstances.

The Vatican is the world’s oldest continuous ruling entity. Its teaching authority has remained unchanged for centuries. The weight of tradition and the unwillingness to admit past mistakes has rigidified doctrinal positions. So the ambivalent policies towards Judaism remained for long unchanged and unchallenged. Not until the end of the Vatican’s temporal power in 1870 was there any sign of new thinking. But even here the fervour of theological antipathy was only replaced by a widespread feeling of disdain for this minority group, still largely confined to a ghetto-like existence. The process of Jewish emancipation, as the product of French radicalism, was predictably resisted by the Catholic authorities, but its success at least in western Europe brought about improved conditions. But the liberals’ hopes for assimilation were to prove no more successful than the Catholic hopes for conversion. Popular prejudice still remained, as could be seen in the repeated accusations by Catholic zealots that Jews were guilty of ritual murder of Christian children. The last such trial of Jews suspected of this crime took place as late as the early 20th century.

Despite repeated Papal admonitions that the Jews were to be protected as witnesses to God’s love, traditional Catholic antijudaism still flourished. To be sure, in the 19th century, a more tolerant attitude of laissez-faire prevailed. Pressure on the Jews to convert was more or less abandoned, except in the scandalous case in the 1850s when the boy Edgardo Mortara, baptized by his nurse as an infant, was removed from his intimidated parents and forcibly taken to Rome to be brought up as a Catholic. Pius IX’s obstinacy in this case cost him the support of liberals world-wide. The subsequent downfall of the Vatican’s territorial powers in 1870 was hence not regretted.

For the next ninety years, however, Catholic theological positions towards the Jews remained unchanged, even while the former Roman ghetto was demolished and Jews entered the new Italian kingdom to be citizens with equal rights. But the ending of the previous balancing act of church protection left the Vatican unprepared to counter the new and much more dangerous force of secular antisemitism. Brechenmacher rightly sees that the church’s antijudaism had nothing in common with this virulent racist ideology of the late 19th and 20th centuries. But equally, the long tradition of Catholic discrimination against the Jews prevented any more positive steps to counter this new antisemitism. Too often Catholics gave credence to the secular conspiracy theories about Jews, as could be seen in the notorious Dreyfus affairs of the 1890s. Too often the Vatican abstained from adopting any pro-Jewish position, or for example supporting the Zionist ideas for moving the Jews back to Palestine.

After 1918, with the overthrow of the monarchies, and the rise of popular dictatorships in Italy, Germany and Russia, the Vatican’s chief preoccupation was to obtain legal guarantees of protection for the Catholic populations. Inevitably this gave these regimes some international recognition, though the attempt failed in the case of the Soviet Union. In the case of both Italy and Germany, the Vatican’s strategy was successful in obtaining a Concordat which seemingly gave assurances for the future. The Vatican’s hope that this arrangement would prevent or at least mitigate the growth of more radical ideologies and policies was soon proved illusory. The Nazis’ antisemitic outbursts in particular, and subsequent military aggressions, led to considerable heart-searching. Pope Pius XII’s resolute search for ways to preserve peace before September 1939 was a failure. After war broke out, he continued to believe that the Papacy could play a mediating role. This compelled an avoidance of any open criticism or condemnation of the warring parties, lest the Vatican’s impartiality be compromised. Any such Papal declarations might possibly prompt either side to take drastic reprisals against those being victimized and hence make matters worse. The Vatican consequently adopted a policy of almost total silence about the Nazi attacks on the Jews, which was subsequently much misunderstood or interpreted as due to engrained antisemitism.

Brechenmacher has no difficulty in refuting this latter calumny by citing the numerous Vatican documents attesting to the concern expressed about the Nazi policies of racial hatred and discrimination. After Hitler’s rise to power, the Vatican was urged to speak out against the persecution of the Jews, and responded in general terms through such documents as the Papal Encyclical of 1937, Mit brennender Sorge. Practically, the Vatican encouraged the efforts by the Catholic authorities in Germany for the emigration of Jews, though mainly this assisted only Catholic Jews.

As the Nazis’ true hostility towards the Church became clearer, so the Vatican’s antipathy towards Nazism and all its works increased. The papal authorities were thus, with some discomfort, on the same side as the ill-fated Jews. But there is no evidence that the Vatican was prepared to launch any large-scale offensive against the Nazi state, lest this endanger the 1933 Concordat itself. And it is equally obvious that, like every other leading political authority in Europe, the Vatican could not envisage the possibility of the kind of radicalized ideological campaign which led to the Nazis’ mass murder of six million Jews. After 1939, there was a natural reluctance to believe the rumours of violent persecutions and executions, which were often regarded as exaggerated war-time atrocity propaganda. The Vatican had no ability to ascertain the true facts about unverifiable crimes in unreachable parts of the continent. Furthermore the Vatican was totally unprepared for practical steps to assist the victims. Its officials were to be flooded with appeals, but could do little but issue calls to its supporters in other parts of the world. The responses were almost always disappointing.

More significantly the ferocity of the Nazi attacks against the Jews was seen as part of the wider moral disaster caused by the war. The singularity of the Holocaust remained unrecognized. Still less was the mass destruction of European Jewry seen as a cause for Catholic reflection, let alone repentance. Not for many more years did the church leaders begin to realize that the Jewish tragedy affected them too and demanded a revision of their traditional ambivalent attitudes.

Brechenmacher rightly regrets that the Vatican’s central documents from 1939 onwards remain closed to researchers. But enough has already appeared, and sufficient analysis has already taken place, that he believes a full opening of the archives will reveal little new. At the same time, he deplores the fact that the Vatican’s policies and personalities have been attacked for various self-interested reasons, which have little to do with the actual historical record. He therefore regrets that, for example, the pejorative view of Pope Pius XII, first propagated by the Swiss playwright Rolf Hochhuth in the 1960s, still continues to have widespread influence in the public mind.

In assessing Pius XII’s war-time role, Brechenmacher is critical of the Pope’s highly contrived and convoluted speech-making, which successfully avoided calling a spade a spade. But he draws attention to the considerable impact of Papal interventions on behalf of the Nazis’ victims in such countries as Hungary, Roumania and Turkey. He avoids any discussion of the controversial issue of what successes, or alternately disasters, other policies taken by the Papal authorities might have had. Overall his verdict is much the same as that propounded forty years ago by the Jesuit editors of the Vatican’s Actes et documents for the war years: it is true that not enough was done; it is not true that nothing was done.

For the period after 1945, Brechenmacher is obliged, due to the lack of adequate documentation, to abandon his historian’s approach, and instead adopts a more journalistic and impressionistic stance. His account of Pope Paul VI’s visit to the Holy Land in 1964 is well done. He sees this as an important stepping-stone in the improvement of Catholic-Jewish relations. At the same time, his analysis of the pre-history of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration about Judaism, Nostra Aetate,
includes conjectures which will require later verification. For this reason, he leaves unexplored the exact reasons why Popes John XXIII and Paul VI should have so readily abandoned the traditional policies of the Vatican towards the Jews. It is clear however that he warmly greets the new stance so forcibly advocated by Pope John Paul II, which for the first time expresses a wholly positive and creative tone for the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people. He finds it ironic that this striking change should have been prompted by the crimes of the Nazis. But the real reason, Brechenmacher believes, was due to the disappearance of the Vatican’s temporal power and hence the appropriateness of the long-held protective stance towards Judaism. Even though overtones of this traditional attitude lingered on, the shocks of the mid-20th century swept it all away. It was the merit of Pope John XXIII that he recognized the time had come for an entirely new beginning, to give official approval to the condemnation of antisemitism, and to pave the way for new approaches between the elder and younger brothers in faith. In Brechenmacher’s view, despite all the theological and political problems that still remain, the present readiness to deal with the troubled history of this relationship shows that the future can be regarded with optimism.
The book comes with helpful footnotes, a full bibliography and an index.

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1b) Tom Lawson, The Church of England and the Holocaust. Christianity, Memory and Nazism. (Studies in Modern British Religious History, Volume 13) Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press. 2006. 207 Pp.. ISBN 1 84383 219 4

For the first fifteen years after the end of the Second World War, the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews of Europe was rarely the subject of public debate or historical analysis. Only after the Eichmann trial did the term ãholocaustä gain widespread acceptance. Even then this tragedy was largely considered as a matter for the Jewish people alone. Not until after an increasing volume of criticism arose in the 1960s and 1970s did the Christian churches begin to acknowledge that their role as bystanders needed to be re-examined. In more recent years, a large number of books, usually written with a moralistic tone, have focused attention on the specific role of individual churches and church authorities. Tom Lawson’s examination of the Church of England’s attitudes is an expansion of an earlier article in Twentieth Century British History, Volume 14, no. 2, (2003) and an addition both to the history and the historiography of Holocaust studies.

Lawson rightly challenges the view that the avoidance of any discussion in the immediate post-war years of the Nazis’ persecution of the Jews was the result of the preoccupation with Cold War crises and polemics. Instead he suggests that we need to understand the responses of the Church of England, throughout the whole period from 1933 onwards, from within its own earlier mentalities and preconceptions. He shows clearly that, in the 1930s, the Anglican perception of Nazism as an evil ideology, and the support given to the persecuted German churches, were primary factors in interpreting the fate of the Jews. It was perhaps understandable that churchmen should come to regard Nazi totalitarianism as an anti-Christian relic of Teutonic barbarism. Such views were useful after 1939 to strengthen the moral justification for war. Secular British propaganda did the same. But leading members of the Church of England, especially Bishop George Bell of Chichester, made a distinction. They did not condemn all Germans as warmongers or racial murderers, but sought to preserve the image of the German churches, especially the Protestants, as being the victims of Nazi anti-Christian violence and oppression.

Bishop Bell led the way in claiming that there were other Germans who were resisting Nazi totalitarian ambitions, and onwhom the task of rebuilding Germany would fall once Nazism was overthrown. The persecution of the Jews was thus first seen as part of the Nazis’ demonic destructiveness. There was every sympathy for these victims of the Nazi system, especially after Kristallnacht. And whereas the British government played down the Jewish persecution out of fear that they would be obliged to do something to assist them, such as opening Palestine as a haven of refuge, the Church of England led a vigorous and continuous campaign, especially in 1942 and 1943, against its own government’s narrow-mindedness.
But Lawson’s point is well taken. The Church of England was persuaded of Nazism’s evil character because Hitler had first persecuted the churches. When the most prominent Protestant pastor, Martin Niemöller, was imprisoned in 1937, he was seen by all the British churches as the symbol of Nazi oppression, and was prayed for and remembered in Anglican and other parishes across the land. The Church of England’s leaders, especially Archbishop William Temple, backed by Bell, were convinced that their vocal and repeated protests against the Nazi excesses, and their support for the Confessing Church’s stand against totalitarian control, were their contribution to rescuing Christian civilization from disaster. They were encouraged when they found at least one German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, agreeing with them.

From their perspective, the fate of the Jews was not sui generis, but only a culmination of Nazi iniquity. The Church of England had a moral duty to support all these victims and did so to the best of its ability. Before 1939 the Church had led the way in seeking support for refugees from Nazi tyranny. After the outbreak of war, the focus became more on the need to provide asylum in Britain or its empire for those few who could escape, despite the severe restrictions placed on all aliens. But by 1942 the Church’s remarkable flood of indictments and protests got nowhere, and only revealed its impotence in the face of the British government’s obduracy. Even in 1945, the revelations of the horrors of the concentration camps only reinforced this interpretation of Nazi barbarity, but did not lead to a realization that the genocide of the Jews had been something special. Instead the church leaders were determined to lead a crusade to re-Christianize Europe and thus purge their civilization of Nazism’s demonic forces. This campaign, however, had no place for Jews, except as potential converts.
The overthrow of Nazi totalitarianism aroused optimistic hopes, not only in the Church of England, but also in other churches, for a renewal of Christian civilization. The longed-for peace, disarmament, and prosperity would surely follow. But very soon the dark clouds of a new totalitarian and anti-Christian threat. coming from the Soviet Union, became apparent. The Churches were once again called to mobilize themselves for an armed defence of their heritage. And in such circumstances, the need was obvious to enlist in this new cause those Germans, especially in the Wehrmacht, who were presumed to have been anti-Nazi all along. So a continuity between the interpretations of the 1930s and those of the 1950s could easily be established and maintained. Nazi tyranny was seen as a temporary sickness which had afflicted only a section of the German population. But this understanding of Nazism gave no priority to its antisemitic imperative, and certainly would not have agreed that all Germans were “antisemitic eliminationists”. The end of the war in 1945 and the onset of the Cold War’s antagonisms only confirmed this view, and led to the downplaying of Jewish suffering and its full implications.

Lawson corrects those interpretations which minimize the importance of church opinion, or suggest that a pessimistic and self-doubting community existed in those years. To the contrary, he praises the confidence of the Church of England leaders, but does suggest that their concern for German Protestantism as a bastion of anti-Nazi resistance left no room for a closer regard for Jewish concerns. And Bishop Bell, like his colleagues throughout the Anglican hierarchy, was far removed from even considering the consequences of Christian antisemitism itself, or the extent to which the majority of German churchmen had willingly enough supported it. Such a self-critical examination, though promoted at the time by a maverick Church of England clergyman, James Parkes, got nowhere. Parkes’ pleas for a recasting of Christian-Jewish relations had to wait for another forty years.

Lawson’s point of view is, of course, drawn from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Like others, he engages in wishful thinking in writing history as it should have happened. Hence his verdict that Bishop Bell was myopic about the Jewish fate is itself a distortion. He appears to be promoting a more pluralistic viewpoint than was prevailing in the 1930s and 1940s. Perhaps he would have been wiser to have avoided such post-hoc moralisms. Instead he might well have shown how similar the

Anglican attitudes on the Jewish question were to those of the British Catholics, or indeed to the very similar views held by Pope Pius XII. He nowhere discusses the attitudes of the British Jewish community. Nor does he make any mention of the extent to which Anglican attitudes towards the Holocaust were affected by what was happening in Palestine/Israel. This could perhaps be the subject of a sequel, and thus make use of his commendable skill at research and analysis.

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2) Journal articles. a) “Was Nazism an ersatz political religion, or were Christianity and Nazism incompatible?”

These questions have recently received revived attention through back-to-back appearances in two prestigious journals, The Journal of Modern History and The Journal of Contemporary History. In the former’s Volume 78, no. 3, September 2006, Neil Gregor, of the University of Southampton, devotes the first ten pages of a large survey of “Politics, Culture, Political Culture: recent work on the Third Reich and its Aftermath” to a discussion of the opposing views on this topic. He starts with what he calls the traditional view from the 1960s that the Church Struggle had been between a tyrannical dictatorship and the martyr-like defenders of the true faith, as exemplified in John Conway’s study of The Nazi Persecution of the Churches 1933-1945. By contrast, more recent literature has shown a more nuanced relationship. On the one side, we now recognize that many churchmen, both Catholic and Protestant, readily enough supported the regime’s political goals, including its antisemitic policies. On the other side, many leading Nazis continued to regard themselves as ãpositiveä Christians, without necessarily subscribing to any denominational loyalties or doctrines. Gšring was married in church, Wilhelm Frick retained a strong commitment to Protestantism, and Hanns Kerrl, the Minister for Church Affairs, could quote the Bible by heart and was convinced that the churches and the Nazi Party were inseparable because both opposed Judasim.

These latter sentiments led Richard Steigmann-Gall, in his book The Holy Reich, to challenge the traditional view. Neil Gregor clearly has some sympathy for this assessment, and agrees with the contention that National Socialism overlapped with much in the Protestant tradition, and drew support from many engaged churchmen who continued to believe they could be good Christians and good Nazis at the same time. Gregor does acknowledge, as have other critics, that Steigmann-Gall’s conclusions are largely drawn from Nazism’s early years, and rightly points out that Steigmann-Gall accepts at face value any Nazi positive references to Christianity, however vaguely defined. Yet he also applauds Steigmann-Gall’s view that certain elements of Protestant nationalist theology and social activism fed into some strands of Nazi ideology and propaganda. This may indeed cause us to question the outright depiction of the Nazi regime as a fundamentally godless, atheistic phenomenon. Rather it prompts us to look more closely at the complex intersections, elisions and clashes of religious and secular forces in this critical period of German history.

The editors of The Journal of Contemporary History decided to devote the entire issue of Volume 42, no. 1, January 2007, to an even broader valuation of these questions. In his introduction, Professor Richard Evans of Cambridge asserts that “the relationship of German National Socialism to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, has recently moved to the forefront of historical enquiry”. He too suggests that the traditional view needs revision. Younger scholars have been far more critical of the churches and their readiness to collaborate with Nazi agencies than was the case earlier. It is now generally acknowledged that there was a wide variety of attitudes towards the regime rather than any united spirit of resistance.

The contributors to this issue include both supporters and critics of Steigmann-Gall’s theses, as outlined above, and he himself will be responding in the next issue in April. The majority of the five essays here printed, however, are sceptical of his conclusions, believing that he has failed to present a convincing case. Manfred Gailus of Berlin’s Technical University suggests that Steigmann-Gall has been captivated by a strange obsession to depict National Socialism as emphatically as Christian as possible. This seduces the author into systematic blind spots about Nazism as a whole. He.underestimated, for example, the influence of Goebbels even in, or especially in, the early years. Irving Hexham of the University of Calgary backs this up by examining both Goebbels’ early novel Michael, which strikingly adopted the German neo-pagan thought of the day, and the work of Alfred Rosenberg, whose anti-Christian tirades were more significant that Steigmann-Gall allows. Doris Bergen, author of a noted work on the so-called “German Christians”, the small minority of Protestants who enthusiastically endorsed Hitler’s rule, suggests that Steigmann-Gall has made a significant contribution by focussing on those Nazis who claimed to be Christians, but chides him for ignoring the attitudes of the Catholic Church. Above all, Steigman-Gall fails to carry his researches into the later Nazi years. After 1937, he admits, the regime took an anti-church turn, even though he sought to downplay the influence of the notorious anti-clerical, Martin Bormann. But he signally fails to take note of the striking findings of Wolfgang Dierker, whose study Himmlers Glaubenskrieger (Paderborn: Schöningh 2003) documented the systematic and deliberately anti-Christian policies of the SD and SS under Himmler’s control. There can be no doubt that, had the war ended otherwise, these men would have dominated Nazi strategies for the future of Christianity in the (un)Holy Reich. Theirs was a political religion of a very different sort.

b) John A. Moses, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s repudiation of Geman War theology” in Journal of Religious History, Volume 30, no. 3, October 2006, p.354ff

Bonhoeffer’s theological evolution still evokes debate and discussion. Was he ever a convinced pacifist, who later abandoned such views in order to paricipate in the plot to overthrow Hitler by violence? Was he ever a true nationalist, like so many of his contemporaries? How did he regard the nation state, and its historic destiny? Moses seeks to show that in his book Ethics Bonhoeffer examined in a truly radical fashion the whole doctrine of state power and the glorification of sacred violence which the Lutheran church had for so long upheld. Karl Barth of course led the way in pilloring the German theologians for imagining they could enlist God on their side. But Bonhoeffer goes further in uncompromisingly demanding that Christians love their enemies without any reservations. He sought to convince his fellow churchmen that war was the product of a fallen creation and could never be theologically endorsed. In the end his own sense of what was a responsible action for a Christian led him to support the assassination attempt to get rid of a tyrant, but it also included an acceptance of guilt for such an action. Had he lived Bonhoeffer would doubtless have devised a new form of Christian political obedience. But Moses shows how his thought was developing in those final critical years before his execution by the Nazis as a traitor to his nation but to later eyes as a Christian martyr for his faith.

c) Leonid Rein, “The Orthodox Church in Byelorussia under Nazi occupation (1941-1944)” in East European Quarterly, 29 no. 1, Spring 2005

White Russia, or Byelorus, as it is now called, suffered enormous and devastating slaughter and destruction during the last century, particularly during the period of the German-Soviet war when many of its inhabitants were ruthelessly murdered, its economy exploited, and its resources plundered by both sides. This article seeks to clarify how the existing Orthodox Church members and institutions survived these onslaughts. Little has been written on this subject before, and most of it was either condemnatory or apologetic. In such circumstances Rein has a hard task in assessing the policies of these persecuted Christians. In fact he shows that the misfortunes of the Orthodox followers began even before the war when Byelorussia was territorially split between Poland and the Soviet Union, both of which attempted to erase any independence, or to integrate the population under either Catholic or Russian Orthodox auspices respectively.

After the Geman invasion of 1941, some Orthodox members hoped to find relief from their Communist oppressors. They were soon disillusioned. The Nazi occupiers had no interest in recreating the Orthodox or any other church structures, unless completely subordinated to their control. The bishops and priests who sought to provide pastoral care for their followers were soon embroiled in the internecine political disputes. The local clergy had a highly ambiguous position trying to make the best of their enforced co-operation with the Germans in order to prevent worse disasters. Like some of the Judenräte they hoped they could somehow sate the Nazi Moloch. The German policy was also ambiguous, at least when compared to the Soviets’ outright hostility. When in 1944 the Red Army reconquered the whole territory, the Orthodox Church paid a terrrible price for its alleged collaboration with the fascist enemy.

Rein’s analysis of the surviving German documentation and the post-war secondary sources (but not in Russian) gives a balanced and insightful account of this murky and largely obscure chapter of church history.

3) Book notes:
a) The Cambridge History of Christianity: World Christianities c.1914 – c.2000, ed. Hugh McLeod. Cambridge 2006 ISBN 13 978-0-521-81500-0

This encyclopedic 700 page survey written, in the main, by British theologians and academics, will be a valuable reference work for all interested in 20th century developments in the Christian churches. The tone is eirenic and scholarly, with recognition of the pluralistic charcter of the Christian presence in this troubled and often traumatic century. As McLeod states in his Introduction, in this century “Christianity became a worldwide religion, yet at the same time it suffered a series of major crises in what had been for centuries its heartland”. This volume treats only western Christianity and is principally concerned with the political and social life of the churches, while theological developments are treated only when really relevant to the life of the institutions. The major themes covered are the challenges faced by the European churches; the diminishing importance of denominational boundaries, the role of war for the churches, and the contrasting theme of the churches’ support for emancipatory movements worldwide. This is a rich and rewarding read, which can be commended to all.

b) Christian Nottmeier, Adolf von Harnack und die deutsche Politik 1890-1930, Tübingen Mohr Siebeck 2004. Rather belatedly we draw attention to this first-rate political biography of Germany’s leading Protestant theologian in the early years of the last century. Nottmeier, who teaches in Berlin, has taken full advatage of the extensive Harnack Nachlass to give us a first-rate analysis of how this representative figure established his reputation not only as a historian of Christian dogma, but also politically as a major force in Protestant circles. His close acquaintance with the Kaiser was held to be a major advantage in his career, but Harnack was not uncritrical of his sovereign’s faults. And following Germany’s defeat in 1918, he threw his weight on to the side of the new Republic. Such a switch was regarded by many of his conservative supporters as a betrayal, and his public reputation suffered along with the new Republic itself. But equally fateful was the decline in subscription to his liberal theological views in the 1920s. Harnack was too closely associated both with the liberal optimism of the pre-1914 Protestant milieu, and also with the patriotism of the war. The younger generation, such as Bonhoeffer, regarded the old master as passe and outdated. His reliance on the progressive effects of good history was spurned in favour of much more radical theologies, such as those of Karl Barth. Not until the 1990s were attempts made to rehabilitate Harnack in his own setting, and not in the light of the earlier disastrous campaigns for German supremacy. Nottmeier’s scholarly account is full of good interpretations, which will undoubtedly help to bring about a more balanced view of this great scholar.

c) Historisches Jahrbuch, Vol. 126 2006, Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg/Munich

The latest volume in this series includes a number of interesting articles on German and European Catholicism, written from a discursive but basically conservative point of view. Joachim Schmiedl examines the impact of secularization especially on the various Catholic organizations and religious orders. Stefan Gerber looks at the constitutional debates over the position of the Catholic Church in the Weimar Republic, and the refusal of the socialists to accept the Vatican’s much-urged proposals for a new Concordat.

Walther Ziegler defends the policies of the Catholic bishops under the Nazi regime, seeking to meliorate the wishful thinking of some later writers, and pointing out that political revolution or even resistance was never the bishops’ top priority. So too Joseph Pilvousek describes the same dilemma which faced the bishops during the Communist rule in East Germany, which they met mainly by complete abstinence from political engagement. Benjamin Ziemann analyses the use of public opinuon polls by the Catholic authorites in the Bonn Republic after 1968, which were not exactly encouraging as the mileux tried to come to terms with the post-Vatican 2 situation. All good “state-of-the-art” articles.

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

A very warm welcome to you all as we begin a new year. I trust that you were all able to have a blessed and restful vacation, and will now be returning to your labours with renewed zest. As far as I can look ahead, it would seem that there are numerous new books appearing in our field of interest, and I hope to be able to continue to bring you some evaluations of their contents and interpretations in the months ahead. Your comments are always welcome, but please remember NOT to press the reply button unless you want your remarks to be shared by all 500 subscribers. Please use my personal e-mail address = jconway@interchange.ubc.ca .

Contents:

1) Book Reviews

a) ed. Berkman, Contemplating Edith Stein
b) Heinecke, Konfession und Politiik in der DDR

2) Conference Report, German Studies Association, October 2006

3) Book notes:

a) Barth: Dolchstosslegenden
b) Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair
c) Als Jesus arisch wurde

List of books reviewed in Vol. XII – 2006

1a) Joyce Avrech Berkman, ed. Contemplating Edith Stein Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. xiii + 354 pp. Illustrations, list of contributors, index. $75.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-268-02188; $35.00 (paper), ISBN 0-268-02189-9.
(This review appeared first on H-German on November 10, 2006)

The unnecessary and regrettable controversy surrounding the 1942 murder in Auschwitz of the German nun Edith Stein, also known as Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, and her subsequent canonization by Pope John Paul II, has diverted attention away from the actual personality and achievements of this remarkable woman during her short lifetime. The objective of the collected essays in this volume, edited by Joyce Berkman, is to provide a fuller account of Stein’s life and writings, both before and after she joined the Carmelite order in 1933. The contributors, the majority of whom are female scholars, come from Italy, Germany, Canada and the United States. All the essays are in English and where appropriate, they have been skillfully translated.

The book is divided into three sections. The first describes Stein’s personality, experience, self-awareness and self-representation as she moved through the various chapters of her life, while the second pays tribute to her pioneering position as a modern Catholic feminist. In the third section the authors outline the essence of her philosophical contributions and discuss her originality in the rather opaque and inaccessible field of phenomenology. The editor and her chief partners describe themselves as fervent feminists and they seek to move away from the overly hagiographical treatment Stein has recently received. Consequently emphasis falls on her secular writings and career. Each essay is accompanied by relevant scholarly notes.As Berkman notes, we know little about Stein’s interior life. Attempts to compile a linear, pious biography as appropriate for a Catholic saint ignore the well-known ambivalence and particularities in her career. As a Jew, a woman and a highly talented intellectual, she was a triple outsider. She experienced various identity transitions, sought to integrate herself in different but essentially antithetical communities and suffered painful rejections from many sides. Trying to depict her life in unbiased but sympathetic terms has not been easy for scholars.

Though raised in an observant Jewish Orthodox family, Stein early on felt alienated, as a woman intellectual, from the paternalistic, male-dominated hierarchies of contemporary Judaism. Instead she embraced the high culture of the German Bildungsbürgertum. Her university education at the universities in Breslau and Göttingen led her to believe in a lofty rationalism, humanism and moral idealism. Such optimism faced severe challenges through the events of the 1914-18 war, and equally through her failure to secure academic recognition as a philosopher. In 1921 she converted to Catholicism, having discovered an affinity to the life of Saint Teresa of Avila. Berkman does not really explain why, but Stein remained loyal to phenomenology and sought to combine it with her Catholic convictions. In the 1920s she taught at a Catholic girls’ school and became a popular lecturer on women and their education. But her hopes of becoming either a professor of philosophy or a professed Carmelite nun both eluded her.

With the rise of the National Socialists to power, the path to a university career was blocked for Stein. But in August 1933 she was accepted into the Cologne Carmel, though this step virtually cut her off from her immediate family in Breslau, who could only regard this flight as a betrayal. Her convent writings found no publisher because of Nazi opposition. She herself managed to flee to a Dutch nunnery in late 1938, but was caught there by the German occupation. In 1942 the Gestapo ordered the arrest of all Catholic Jews, and Stein and her sister Rosa were transported to Auschwitz and murdered there on April 4 of the same year.

The Vatican’s desire to include Stein among those selected for canonization aroused understandable resentment in the Jewish community, even though John Paul II was careful to claim that she died both as a Catholic daughter of Israel and as a martyr of the Church. This dispute did little to throw light on her lasting achievements or characteristics. Dana Greene in her essay suggests that a secular approach is more rewarding for such interpretations. She rejects the approach of Stein’s hagiographers, who see her life through a lens of redemptive suffering, as a meaningful example to the faithful. Greene believes Stein’s career should be studied developmentally rather than teleologically, and included in the wider context of early-twentieth-century German history. It is her life-long search for meaning that should attract biographers, showing how she overcame the contradictions and tensions caused by her varied and rival relationships. The most notable image of Stein, embodying just these factors, is the sight of her dressed in the black habit of a Carmelite nun, with the yellow Star of David sewn on her sleeve.

In 1987 John Paul II beatified Stein in front of seventy thousand Germans in Cologne. In 1942, when a freight train carried her to her death in a gas chamber, no one helped or cried out to stop the horror. This divergence is the core of the dispute over her legacy. But, as Patricia Hampl points out, this controversy has little to do with Stein herself, or her own personal and spiritual pilgrimage. She never explained the reasons for her conversion to Catholicism or her acceptance of a destiny of the contemplative life in a closed convent. Speculations must remain unresolved. The evidence shows that she found fulfillment in her chosen profession and that her choice did not imply a rejection of her Jewish heritage. On the other hand, her mind was too acute to adopt any kind of sentimental or simplistic syncretism of her Jewish and Christian identities. So it would be too hasty to suggest that her decision was a reaction to the barriers that in the 1920s still prevented young self-confident German girls or Jews from achieving their personal goals. At the same time, however, her discovery of faith in the life of Teresa of Avila undoubtedly followed from the painful and ambivalent crises that she experienced during and after the First World War.

Stein’s conversion to Catholicism and Carmelite renunciation of the world presented obvious problems to those contributors who sought to pay tribute to her as a modern German feminist. Her life as role model is so out of tune with present-day feminist opinion that it is small wonder that this aspect of her career has been downplayed. But, even in her very traditional understanding of women’s essential character, her attempts to empower women deserve acknowledgment, especially as a protest against the male-dominated totalitarian regime imposed after 1933.Similarly, her views on women’s education are singularly out of fashion today, particularly her stress on the necessity of teachers acting as moral models, transmitting to their pupils an openness and sense of trust, which should then be reciprocated. Few today would share her view that teaching is a “sacred calling” and that its practitioners should seek to foster the student’s harmonious growth and character. In essence she derived her ideas on the importance of educating the moral personality of each individual from the liberal idealism of the Humboldt brothers in the early nineteenth century. But again, she was fated to see such ideas ruthlessly quashed in the new Nazi Germany.

The third section of the book discusses Stein’s contributions to the philosophical debates of her time. Her studies in this field were almost entirely derived from the ideas of her Doktorvater Edmund Husserl. Even though she was soon to part company with Husserl, largely because he could not regard her as an equal and placed obstacles in the way of her obtaining an academic position, nevertheless her range of thought remained strongly Husserlian in scope. But the passage of time has not been kind to his speculative theories on the philosophical grounding of psychology or the human sciences. The chapters discussing Stein’s philosophy are therefore more of an exercise in pathology. Their authors fail to prove that her thought has any present-day relevance.

In Contemplating Edith Stein, the editors deliberately chose not to examine her religious writings, presumably to avoid any suspicion of abetting hagiography. But this decision produces a somewhat one-sided picture; Sarah Borden does contribute, however, a useful survey of literature in English on Stein that includes her spiritual writings and lists the books covering her canonization and her importance for Jewish-Christian relations. She also provides a detailed and serviceable bibliography.

Overall, the aim of this work is to depict Stein neither as a saint nor as an emblem of ideological controversy, but rather as an individual whose struggle to insist on her own humanity was to be so tragically cut short by the Nazi terroristic regime.

JSC

1b) Herbert Heinecke. Konfession und Politik in der DDR: Das Wechselverhältnis von Kirche und Staat im Vergleich zwischen evangelischer und katholischer Kirche. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2002. 508 pp. Bibliography. EUR 38.00 (paper), ISBN 3-373-01960-9.

This review was first printed in H-German on November 7, 2006, and is here reprinted by kind permission of the author:
Catholics and Protestants in the GDR: Comparison and Synthesis

Since the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in 1989-90 a veritable explosion of studies has occurred treating the churches, and especially the Protestant churches, in East German society.[1] Given the role played in this collapse by “social ethical groups” operating under the umbrella of the Protestant churches, this development is hardly surprising. Indeed, some have gone so far as to dub the events of 1989 a “Protestant Revolution.”[2] This book, Herbert Heinecke’s 2001 doctoral dissertation in Staatswissenschaft at the University of Magdeburg, is less interested in adding to this copious literature than in synthesizing the findings of other scholars in order to draw comparisons between the Catholic and Protestant churches.

As Heinecke admits in his foreword, this study is not historical enough to satisfy historians, theological enough to satisfy theologians, nor sociological enough to satisfy scholars in the sociology of religion fully (p. 5). Instead, in a series of thematically organized chapters, Heinecke draws extensively on existing literature in these fields to describe the church policies of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) and the functioning of both churches in the GDR. As a matrix for comparison, he examines developments within each church in each of the following areas: history and tradition, church membership, organizational structure, self-understanding and social activity. He also looks at the limited cooperation between the two churches, which culminated in the late 1980s in rare joint ventures.

In these sections, and most clearly in his comparative chapter at the end, Heinecke, argues that the Protestant churches changed and adapted far more than their Catholic counterpart over the course of the GDR’s history. While both churches adopted initially confrontational postures toward the establishment of SED rule, differences in their own histories and traditions, social positions and self-understandings led them to respond very differently to changing circumstances in the GDR. These differences became especially clear after the mid-to-late-1950s, when the relaxation of state anti-church activities made room for more nuanced church-state relations. They culminated in the late 1980s in the central role played by the Protestant churches in the emergence of East German civil society at a time when the Catholic church was still only beginning to come to terms with its place in the GDR.

The East German Catholic church, acutely aware of its status as a double minority, in relation to both Protestantism and the official atheism of the SED, responded by circling the wagons, withdrawing into itself and avoiding active engagement with surrounding society. Heinecke offers several reasons for these developments. Ideological opposition to communism was much stronger in the Catholic church than in the Protestant churches following World War II. As a historical minority in Germany since the Imperial era, Catholics were more easily drawn to passive models of the church in society, explaining their social role by way of such metaphors as “hibernation” or sharing an apartment house with hostile strangers (pp. 222-226). Most important, according to Heinecke, was the destruction of Catholic associational life by the National Socialists. Unable to rebuild their vibrant prewar lay movement in the postwar GDR, East German Catholics adopted a thoroughly hierarchical and institutional perspective. These tendencies were reinforced during the nearly twenty-year tenure (1961-79) of Alfred Bengsch as Bishop of Berlin. As the leader of Catholics in the GDR, Bengsch sought accommodation with the GDR state through a model of complete abstinence from politics. Only in the 1980s were East German Catholics afforded the freedom to explore other ways of relating to society.

By contrast, East German Protestants, encompassing more than 80 percent of the GDR’s citizens in 1950 and nearly 40 percent in 1987, expected to play a leading social and political role (pp. 275-276). While the internal diversity of the East German Protestant churches made them vulnerable to the wedge-politics of the SED, this quality also fostered greater dynamism. No single Protestant model of church-state relations emerged, leaving room for multiple models to develop. Most Protestant activity avoided the extremes of total opposition, modeled by Otto Dibelius (Bishop of Berlin from 1948 to 1967) and complete accommodation, modeled by Moritz Mitzenheim (Bishop of Thuringia from 1945 to 1970). Instead, Protestants constantly sought out new forms of political and social engagement. Since the Protestant churches in East and West Germany were formally united in the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) until 1969, Protestant activities until that time were dominated by the desire to affirm German unity. With the establishment of a separate East German church in 1969, the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen (BEK), this focus began to change. Thereafter, East German Protestants began to seek out new models for their activity in the GDR. These models, such as “A Church for Others” and “A Church within Socialism,” represented attempts at partial accommodation with the SED, but they also represented a continuing claim to social relevance. This accommodation led, by the 1980s, to circumstances in which “social ethical groups” interested in peace, the environment and human rights could operate relatively unmolested under the aegis of the Protestant churches. These groups were to play an instrumental role in the ultimate collapse of SED rule.

Although it is not based on original archival research, the volume presents an effective synthesis of existing literature on the churches in the GDR. This presentation is especially helpful since this body of literature has grown so large in recent years. The book’s comparative structure and thematic organization also make it useful as a reference for those seeking information on specific aspects of church life in the GDR, such as membership patterns, organizational structure and the like. The book’s thematic structure and lack of a clear narrative, however, constitute barriers to its overall readability. While Heinecke’s conclusions regarding the differences in Catholic and Protestant developments seem sound, they do not necessarily break much new ground. Instead, this book is most useful as a summary of the current state of research.

Notes

[1]. To mention just a few titles: Robert F. Goeckel, The Lutheran Church and the East German State: Political Conflict and Change under Ulbricht and Honecker (Ithaca: Cornell, 1990); Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche. Der Weg in die Anpassung (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1993); Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche. Hohenflug und Absturz (Frankfurt/Main: Propyläen, 1995); Detlef Pollack,Kirche in der Organisationsgesellschaft. Zum Wandel der gesellschaftlichen Lage der evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994); Bernd Schaefer, Staat und katholische Kirche in der DDR(Cologne: Böhlau, 1998); Ute Haese, Katholische Kirche in der DDR. Geschichte einer politischen Abstinenz (Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1998); and Stephanie Gerlach, Staat und Kirche in der DDR. War die DDR ein totalitäres System? (Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1999).

[2]. See Gerhard Rein, ed., Die Protestantische Revolution, 1987-1990. Ein deutsches Lesebuch (Berlin: Wichern, 1990) and Erhardt Neubert, “Eine protestantische Revolution,” Deutschland Archiv 23 (1990): pp. 704-713; for a critical evaluation of this term, see Trutz Rendtorff, ed., Protestantische Revolution? Kirche und Theologie in der DDR: Ekklesiologische Voraussetzungen, politischer Kontext, theologische und historische Kriterien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).

Benjamin Pearson, Department of History,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

2) GSA Panel 177: Christianity, World War II, and the Cold War Moderator: Maria D Mitchell Franklin & Marshall College

Commentator: Victoria Barnett US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Papers: Theologiepolitik, “Kirchenkampf” und Auseinandersetzung mit dem NS-Regime: Die evangelische Landeskirche Badens, 1933-1945. Rolf-Ulrich Kunze Karlsruhe University

“Forced Labor within the Protestant Church and Her Welfare Institutions.” Jochen-Christoph Kaiser Philipps-Univ. of Marburg

“Rosenkranz und Russenvisionen: Visions of Mary in Early Cold War Germany.” Monique Scheer University of Tübingen

Opening a panel that illustrated the depth of the social and political penetration of Christianity in 20th century Germany, Rolf-Ulrich Kunze began by describing a major new collaborative research initiative in the Badische Landeskirche. Kunze began and ended his presentation with the story of pastor Paul Röger, a member of both the Confessing Church and the NSDAP, so as to illustrate the limitations of conventional categories of resistance and conformity for describing Christian clerical responses to the Nazi state. Citing the need for further and more differentiated tools of analysis to get a more precise picture of the social, cultural, and religious picture of the time, Kunze explained how the participants in his research project (from the Universities of Marburg and Karlsruhe) had broken it down into four distinct sub-projects: 1) a structural analysis of Protestant clergy of Baden, mining biographical material for information on the political, ecclesiastical, and social backgrounds of pastors; 2) an examination of the various Protestant associations active in Baden during the Third Reich; 3) an analysis of the ideas and activities of neo-pietistic church groups in Baden; and 4) an examination of the Baden Protestant Bishop and upper church leadership. As Kunze put it, “The main aim of these sub-projects will be to find a new and precise location of Baden in the wider context of contemporary Church history as well as in the social and cultural history of Germany.”

Having outlined this ambitious research project, Kunze went on to describe some of its early findings. He described the remarkably high membership of Baden pastors in the Confessing Church, and explained how this was the result of the strength of the Kirchlich-Positive Vereinigung, a conservative church party whose members joined the Confessing Church en masse in May 1934. Second, Kunze noted the very low levels of membership of Baden pastors in the German Christian Movement. Finally, he explained how the result of all this was to influence Baden Bishop Kühlewein to abandon his early pro-Nazi church policy and separate his regional church from the Reichskirche in November 1934 (making Baden the fourth “intact church”). Kunze used these observations and the example of Pastor Paul Röger to reaffirm Joachim Mehlhausen’s observation that the term“Kirchenkampf” should really be limited to a description of internal Protestant debates and battles in 1933 and 1934, after which the course of events up to 1945 ought to be understood as a separate chapter of the church-state relationship in modern Germany.

Jochen-Christoph Kaiser then followed with a paper on fored labour in the Protestant churches of Germany during the Second World War. Kaiser described how, in the course of the debates leading to the establishment of the ãRemembrance, Responsibility and Futureä fund to compensate forced labourers, the Protestant and Catholic Churches were themselves placed under the spotlight, and the discovery made that the churches themselves had exploited forced labour during the Third Reich. The result was not only that the churches participated in the fund (or found other ways to compensate victims), but also that a new effort was launched to investigate the manner and extent to which church institutions exploited slave labour. Kaiser, part of a research group at the Philipps-University of Marburg Faculty of Theology, outlined the current state of that research, and its initial results. Roughly speaking, Kaiser estimated that between twelve and fifteen thousand foreign forced labourers worked for Catholic and Protestant Churches in Germany. Most of these found themselves occupied in technical jobs in church administration or (more commonly) in cemeteries, farms, workshops, welfare-home kitchens, and even the households of pastors. Kaiser also pointed out the difficulty facing researchers of forced labour do to several structural problems, namely the absence of central offices, official ecclesiastical guidelines, or church tax or related records concerning forced labourers.

Beyond the statistical realities of forced labour in German churches, however, Kaiser raised the larger question of the moral responsibility of the churches. What does moral responsibility look like for the current generation of church leaders, given that the crimes in question were committed by their predecessors in office? What does moral responsibility mean when Christians committed crimes not as individuals but as part of a society engaged in criminal exploitation? In the end, Kaiser argued that the churches have to be measured according to their own high ethical standards, meaning that there remain many research questions yet to be addressed concerning not only forced labour in the churches, but also the broader subject of the churches as participants in the Second World War.

Monique Scheer’s paper on visions of Mary in Cold War Germany raised a different set of questions, and dealt with a different era, than the first two papers. Scheer sought to understand the high frequency of Marian apparition events in Germany after 1945 by taking into account the specific role that Mary plays in times of war. Reports of Marian apparitions, she argued, attract high numbers of followers in times of perceived crisis, when the situation conforms to a known pattern that would make an appearance by the Virgin Mary a logical consequence and thus more plausible and emotionally resonant. Building on knowledge of Marian apparitions in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, German participants in apparition cults envisioned a powerful Virgin Mary who would protect them from the threat of war (making the Cold War analogous to medieval and early modern religious wars).

Flowing from the commentary of Victoria Barnett, the lively discussion that followed drove home the importance of understanding the churches not only as victims or even bystanders in the Third Reich, but also as perpetrators enmeshed in the society and structures of Nazi Germany. Two concrete implications of this would be the redefinition of the term “Kirchenkampf” and a more nuanced understanding of the churches’ role in the Nazi era.

Kyle Jantzen, Alliance University College, Calgary

3) Book notes:

a) Boris Barth, Dolchstosslegenden und politische Desintegration. Das Trauma der deutschen Niederlage im Ersten Weltkrieg 1914-1933. (Schriften des Bundesarchivs 61) Dusseldorf: Droste Verlag 2003

In view of the continuing readiness of the German conservative elite to attribute the rise of Nazism to the Alliesâ vindictive policies attached to the Treaty of Versailles, it is good to have a fully researched study of the attitudes among leading Germans of their reactions to the First World War and its aftermath. Boris Barthâs work is published in the authoritative series put out by the German National Archives. He has the merit of a thorough knowledge of his sources. Two chapters are of particular interest to our readership, “Die nationalprotestantische Sinngebung des Krieges,” p. 150 – 171, and “Die Politik der protestantische Kirche im Zeichen der Niederlage,” p. 340 – 359. His conclusion is definitive: not only did the Church leaders abandon their Christian dogmas in favour of a nationalistic creed which by 1918 verged on a nihilistic or apocalyptic self-destruction, but in the aftermath were among those principally responsible for spreading the exculpatory view that Germany had been stabbed in the back, or later viciously mistreated by the Allies’ deliberate policy of humiliation and robbery in the 1919 treaty. The Protestant clergy were leaders in the programme to defame the Weimar republic. and provided theological justifications for their continued support of nationalist and racist policies, which were ready-made to be swept up into National Socialism.

b) The history of the churches in the Ukraine during the Second World War is both convoluted and disastrous – theology mixed with murder. So it is advantageous that Karel Berkoff devotes a chapter in his rich survey ofLife and Death in Ukraine under Nazi rule, Harvest of Despair, Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press 2004 to the topic of Religion and Popular Piety (p. 232 – 252). He has used a large number of local sources, as well as the only two German accounts by Benz and Heyer, to show how the internal rivalries among the church bodies, and the increasingly repressive policiy of the Germans, made a mockery of the desire of many Ukrainins to have their folk religion restored after the years of Bolshevik rule. The optimism which greeted the arrival of German troops was upheld when grants were made for the restoration of churches. But soon enough the occupation turned sour. Only the seemingly unpolitical and harmless Baptists were able to flourish. But Berkhoff finds records of a widespread desire for popular participation, often to be frustrated for political reasons. And when the Communists returned in 1944, the resulting persecutions were to make the situation even worse.

c) Als Jesus ãarischä wurde is the printed book which arose out of an exhibition put on by the Protestant Church of North Elbia, i.e. Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein in 2001. It provides evidence of the highly divided attitudes held by Protestants during the Nazi years, from those who sought to prove that Jesus could not have been of Jewish ancestry to those whose revulsion against such heresies led them to open revolt. The documentation is mainly from sources in the local church, but is supplemented by noteworthy examples from elsewhere. Very useful biographies are given of a few of the main actors, and the illustrations included are most valuable. The text of various lectures given in association with the exhibition are here reprinted, such as Hansjorg Buss’ fine article on “Entjudung der Kirche” which one now reads with hair-raising exasperation. Particularly shocking is his recounting how successfully those theology professors most involved in the Eisenach Institute dedicated to the eradication of Jewish influence from the church continued to teach in various seminaries and universities for years after the end of the Nazi regime, apparently undisturbed by their past opinions.
Als Jesus arisch wurde. Kirche, Christen Juden in Nordelbien 1933-1945. Die Ausstellung in Kiel. edited by A. Gšgres, S.Linck, and J.Liss-Walther. Bremen: Edition Temmen 2003 ISBN 3-86108-539-9.

List of books reviewed in 2006

Albert, M., Die Benediktinerabtei Maria Laach im Dritten Reich June
Bischoff, G. ed Religion in Austria September
Blmann, W. Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Jochen Klepper im Gespräch February
Boys, M. ed Seeing Judaism anew July/Aug.
Bremer T. ed. Religion und Nation in der Ukraine January
Burkhard, D. Heresie und Mythus March
Clements, K. Bonhoeffer and Britain October
Cox, J. Imperial fault lines. Christianity and Colonial power in India April
De Gruchy, J., Daring, trusting spirit. Eberhard Bethge February
Gailus, M ed Nationalprotestantische Mentalitäten in Deutschland May
Gallo, M. Pius XII, The Holocaust and the Revisionists March
Garbe, I. Theologie zwischen den Weltkriegen April
Good, C. The steamer parish January
Hall, D. Bound and free. A theologian’s journey February
Hauschild, W-D. Konfliktgemeinschaft Kirche January
Haynes, S. The Bonhoeffer Legacy September
Howes, J. Japan’s modern prophet September
Inter-arma Caritas Vatican service for prisoners of war, 1939-1945 March
Kaufmann, S. Consuming Visions. Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine November
Kindopp, J. ed God and Caesar in China May
Laqueur, W. The changing faces of Antisemitism July/Aug.
Monteath, P. Australia’s Lutheran Churches and refugees from Hitler’s
Germany February
Nurser, J. For all Peoples and all nations December
Poewe, K New Religions and the Nazis April
Pollard, J. Money and the rise of the modern papacy April
Plokhy S. and Sysyn, F. Religion and Nation in modern Ukraine January
Pringle, H. The Master Plan. Himmler’s scholars and the Holocaust June
Rittner, C. ed Genocide in Rwanda. Complicity of the churches? May
Roberts, D. Bonhoeffer and M.King. Speaking the truth to power February
Roth, J.K. Ethics during and after the Holocaust October
Sanchez, J. Pope Gabriel December
Schleicher K-T and Walle, H. Aus Feldbriefen junger Christen 1939-1945 November
Schutz, O. Begegnung von Kirche und Welt May
Theriault, B. “Conservative Revolutionaries: Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany after radical political change in the 1990s November:
Thomas, M. Communing with the enemy. Britain and the German Democratic Republic December
Trippen, N. Josef, Kardinal Frings, Vol. II November
Williams, Archbishop R. Why study the Past? September
Zeitgeschichtliche Katholizismusforschung March

With every best wish
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Contents:

1) Appeal on behalf of threatened Centre for the Study of Christianity in the non-western world, Edinburgh, Scotland.

2) Book Reviews

a) Nurser, For all Peoples and all Nations. The ecumenical church and human rights
b) Sanchez, Pope Gabriel
c) Thomas, Communing with the enemy. Britain and the GDR

3) Journal articles

a) Noll, What happened to Christian Canada?
b) Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany.
c) Ziemann, Psychological counseling in West German Catholic Church

1) Dr Michael Marten, of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, sends the following notice:

Dear colleagues,

Many of you may have used the facilities at the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at Edinburgh University. In the course of my research I personally have made extensive use of the Prof. Andrew F Walls library, archives, and staff based at the Centre, and it is a truly remarkable and unique resource for the study of global Christianity in the past, as well as in the present and the future.

However, the Centre is now under serious threat of imminent dismemberment or even closure by the University. Apparently, this is because the University has decided it no longer wishes to pay the rent for the premises the Centre occupies. The building is owned by the Free Church of Scotland, and the rent has risen according to the terms of the original rental agreement the University made with the Free Church when the buildings were first leased from them a number of years ago.

Apparently the University has not even approached the Free Church in recent times to ask if the rental agreement might be renegotiated or reconsidered, which would appear to indicate a lack of will on the part of the University to maintain the Centre at all.

Members of this list will appreciate more than most how tragic the breakup or loss of the Centre would be. I would therefore urge you to write to the University about this. It seems to me that the Head of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences might be an appropriate person to turn to – this is Professor Vicki Bruce. Her address is: College of Humanities & Social Science, The University of Edinburgh, 55-56 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9JU, U.K. Email: Head.CHSS@ed.ac.uk
In addition, if you know other scholars who would be concerned at this, I would urge you to forward this email to them as soon as possible. As the story on the Ekklesia site indicates, the situation is very urgent, with the Centre unlikely to exist in its present form after Christmas if the University has its way.

With best wishes,
Michael Marten

2a) John S. Nurser, For all Peoples and all Nations. The Ecumenical Church and Human Rights. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press 2005 200 Pp. ISBN 1-58901-039-6 cloth; 158901-059-0 paper

The twentieth century will undoubtedly go down in history as having seen unprecedented levels of warfare, violence and revolution world-wide, much of it prompted by national state governments. The cost in terms of human lives and suffering is incalculable. But so prevalent were the cults of militarism, racism and national expansion that any alternative values were spurned and regarded as irrelevant fantasies. Pacifism attracted the allegiance of a tiny minority; Christian pacifists were even fewer. Their advocacy of the eirenic virtues of peace, justice and international reconciliation was for the main part dismissed as utopian. Only on two occasions, in the immediate aftermath of the two world wars, and out of feelings of revulsion against the excesses just experienced, did such ideals come to have support from the movers and shakers of public opinion. In 1919 this resulted in the formation of the League of Nations. But, as its short and sad history proved, the League was unable to reverse the self-seeking and self-glorifying ambitions of individual nations. It did, to be sure, have a limited success in promoting the rights of individual citizens, especially in minority situations.

In 1945 the world community – or rather the leading circles among the victors in western Europe and North America – resolved to do better. They resurrected the international institution in the form of the United Nations Organization, to be given extra enforcement powers, but as history has shown with only partial success. At the same time, these powers were to pay far more attention than before to what was perceived as a vital issue – how to protect the individual from the totalitarian ambitions of maleficent rulers. In short, this led to a sustained campaign for the codification and propagation on a world-wide scale of human rights, which undertaking was a complete novelty on the scale envisaged and eventually realized.

The story of how this campaign developed in the immediate post-1945 years, and the contributions made to its successful conclusion by representatives of the ecumenical Christian community is the subject of John Nurser’s illuminating and well-researched study. His heroes are the far-sighted leaders of a small team associated with the World Council of Churches, itself still only in the process of formation. This body only formally came into being in August 1948. But already its officials had been at work together for several years seeking to promote the reconstruction of a world torn apart by the violence of Nazism and Japanese militarism. It was particularly in the United States and its nearest allies that the initiative was taken to rebuild a better international society than before. The churches, through their international representatives, sought to carry out their mission to bind up the wounds of war and to set a light before men in the name of the Christian values of peace, justice and freedom.

Thoughtful churchmen had already, during the turbulent inter-war years, considered how best the churches could influence the construction of an international order which could be effective enough to maintain stability and peace. But equally, during this period, the realization had grown that individual churchmen or women, and even individual church denominations, could only have some impact if they set aside their historic rivalries and acted together across countries and continents, in some coherent body capable of advancing a common platform in the name of Christian witness.

The difficult and even disastrous developments of the 1930s made the need for such ecumenical collaboration even more urgent. The evident success of the sinister and destructive forces of Nazism, Fascism and Communism presented an unparalleled challenge to the Christian community. When war again engulfed Europe in 1939, it was a notable advance that the church leaders on this occasion showed that they had learnt their lessons from 1914. They refused to give theological justification to national war efforts, or to endorse the view that God was on their side. Instead they strove to maintain whatever links were possible across the battle lines, and to put their faith in the possibility of a reconstructed international world order after hostilities had ceased.

The centre for such hopes for Protestants lay in the as yet incomplete edifice of the World Council of Churches. Under the leadership of its General Secretary, Visser ‘t Hooft, a Dutch Calvinist, these church representatives concentrated the resources they had on thoughtful preparations for a post-war world, not merely for the predictable short-term and humanitarian relief efforts to assist the war’s victims, but more significantly in planning for the creation of a manageable world order based on a commonly-agreed world ethos. In the circumstances of the early war years, this was a heroic gamble of faith.

One prerequisite for the success of such an endeavour was the abandonment of certain deeply entrenched Protestant beliefs. Politics was all too often regarded as a worldly affair, which could easily lead men into sin, and should therefore be shunned. But events had shown that all that was needed for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. Instead, these ecumenical pioneers argued, the missionary zeal of their churches should be devoted, in this pluralistic world, to securing an essential component of stability, namely man’s freedom. Political structures need to be built up strong enough to resist the pressures of intolerant governments and social forces. The achievement of such an international order, and the recognition of its universal validity, could be seen as a true form of Christian evangelism.

The principal architect of such a revisionist concept of Christian witness was the British missionary bureaucrat, Joseph Oldham. But it was the Americans within the ecumenical movement who took the lead in calling for a Christian influence in the post-war settlement in international affairs. To begin with, the impetus came from the missionary societies who believed that the end of the war in 1945 provided new opportunities for Christian mission, based on a new assertion of religious liberty on both the personal and communal levels But under the influence of such men as John Foster Dulles, their horizons widened. Religious liberty for Christian missions, they came to see, was not enough. What was required was, not merely religious liberty for all, but individual liberty for all through the safeguarding of human rights in general. A parallel development can be seen in Catholicism, where Jacques Maritain argued in favour of human rights for all, derived from a sense of the dignity of any human being created in the image of God. Such were the views energetically advanced by representatives of the ecumenical churches during the planning stages of the newly-created United Nations at its founding conference in San Francisco and beyond. It was to be a vital contribution.

Nurser devotes a whole chapter to the career of the American Lutheran scholar and strategist, Fred Nolde, dean of the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, who was to be a strong and effective champion of these ideas for the churches’ role in the new international order. Nolde was of course only the tip of a pyramid of other churchmen, especially in the United States, where the Federal Council of Churches had established, as early as 1940, a Commission to study the basis of a Just and Durable Peace. This Commission’s work was notable in its ability to recruit men and women of distinction and expertise. At the same time, it departed from the earlier attempts of such church bodies, which had been superficial in their diagnoses and proposed remedies for international war and violence. In 1942 Nolde joined this Commission and began to establish a wide-ranging and thoughtful programme of speaking engagements to promote the churches’ views for post-war reconstruction. So too the Peace Aims group in the United States set to work with professional skill, rather than amateur enthusiasm. John Foster Dulles provided very able leadership and made use of his close connections with the American political hierarchy in Washington and New York. By his side, Nolde became the very competent and effective administrator and spokesman for this cause. By 1944, with American confidence that the war would shortly be won, the churches’ leadership in thinking through the issues for a post-war settlement proved to be of considerable value and importance.

Nurser believes rightly that, in subsequent years, the existence and effectiveness of the churches’ contributions have been largely forgotten, or even suppressed in the histories of the United Nations by those who wish to present the organization as a purely non-religious development, owing its inspiration to the secular tradition of the French Revolution. Hence Nolde’s sensitive and creative part has been virtually ignored, even by church historians. But Nurser seeks to show that, on the contrary, the significance of such churchmen as Nolde, Dulles and the President of Princeton University, John Mackay, was acknowledged at the time by all those involved in the delicate and often difficult period of ingestion for the new world order.

In the wider sense, it was undoubtedly the American Presbyterians and Methodists who were the powerhouse of this project for arousing public support for this new vision of American involvement in international affairs . Many of them had strong connections to the YMCA and YWCA, with their long traditions of public involvement and service. They were, to be sure, a small elite coterie, but Nurser shows how their common backgrounds provided for highly effective team work. Their links to the established political figures in the United States, and their years of experience in mobilizing support for worthy causes were great advantages. Translating ethical ideals into day-to-day programmes which served just causes was part of their vibrant tradition. The goal of a new world order and a new peace, promoted with justice, drew wide support, particularly in North America which had not suffered the same kind of disastrous losses and disillusionment as had Europe. Hope was still pervasive. Largely at the prompting of such confident churchmen, in 1946 the incipient World Council of Churches decided to establish a permanent Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. Fred Nolde was appointed its director, and remained at the helm for more than two decades.

At San Francisco the Federal Council of Churches and its mission societies equipped themselves – in an unprecedented way – to give strong support to the United States government’s determination to participate fully in a new international organization, and to reinforce those in a wavering State Department pressing for the inclusion in its structures of a human rights agency. The non-governmental representatives (including from religious groups) who had been invited to attend – in itself an innovation that has been carried into the life of the United Nations with remarkable consequences – mounted a remarkably effective campaign. It struck observers that the concerns of Jews were matched by those of the Protestants and by Catholic religious orders. As Nurser notes, they had unprecedented access to the State Department’s spokesmen. He describes the stages of their successful lobbying to have the new U.N. Charter include provisions on human rights, and in particular its mandatory commitment to a Commission on Human Rights. And he outlines the subsequent stages taken to bring about the institutional reality of this Commission, and the efforts made to define its terms and functions. As Director of the World Council’s Commission on International Affairs, Nolde spent much of his time representing the Protestant world-level organizations to the newly functioning United Nations family of agencies in New York, particularly concentrating on the Commission on Human Rights. So Nurser is surely right in claiming that Nolde and his associates should be regarded as significant godparents to this infant structure. His crowning achievement was the final adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights on December 10th 1948. It was generally recognized that its Article 18 on religious freedom, taken in its context of freedoms of association, expression and information, had largely been his work.

Nurser also points out that this international and ecumenical cooperation became constitutive for the World Council of Churches itself from its official inauguration in 1948. As its General Secretary until 1965, Visser Ît Hooft recognized the importance of the churches’ exercising influence in such international bodies as the United Nations, as well as in public affairs more generally. But as Nurser rather gently laments, his successors were not able to maintain his standard of involvement. But for two decades, the C.C.I.A., under Nolde’s leadership, made strikingly effective contributions for all peoples and all nations. The vision of the World Council’s sponsors that the churches could become meaningful partners in the creation of a new world order based on the ideals of international peace, justice and human rights, was here vindicated and turned to reality.

Nurser’s tribute is all the more welcome as this whole episode has been largely eclipsed, not only in secular histories, but even within the churches themselves. To be sure, the high hopes placed in those years on the success of the United Nations as the arbiter and peacemaker of international conflicts have largely ebbed away. So have the hopes of seeing world Protestantism playing a significant role on the international stage. Only Pope John Paul II achieved the kind of leadership position to which the C.C.I.A. once aspired. Nevertheless the fact is that in the years 1945 to 1948 the international community was able to find a sufficient unity to proclaim the validity of universal human rights, and to take practical measures to turn such a goal into reality. It is only too likely that a few months or years later, such a consensus could not have been achieved. So the churches’ ecumenical contributions to this project, and their pressure for its immediate realization, were significant steps. Nolde’s skill in fashioning a common mind and purpose for the Protestant community on the subject of their international responsibilities has now received its appropriate acknowledgment. Even if the goal of a world ethos and the full protection of human rights is still far from completion for all peoples and all nations, we should nevertheless honour those pioneers who laid the indispensable foundations. We can therefore be grateful to John Nurser for his insightful reappraisal of the history of this process.

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2b) José M.Sanchez. Pope Gabriel. A counterfactual History. New York: iUniverse, Inc. 2006. 115 Pp. IDSBN-13: 978-0-40180-2

We have never before reviewed a spoof. But José Sanchez’ counterfactual account of a fictitious Pope is so delightful, so well-informed and so convincingly told that we are glad to share this comment with you. He invents the story of a Spanish cardinal surprisingly elected in 1939 to succeed Pope Pius XI, but whose short reign took a very different turn from that of the historical figure of Pope Pius XII. Sanchez speculates as to what might have happened had the dictators been defied, the horrors of war denounced, and the victims of persecution and violence supported. His protagonist, Pope Gabriel, demonstrates a strength of will, an absence of caution, and a sympathy for suffering individuals, which were to be his credentials in enhancing the moral credibility of the Papacy. Sanchez skillfully blends in details from the actual historical circumstances, including quotations from the abundant documentation, and portrays the characters and dialogue as consistently as possible with their real personalities. He thereby constructs an appealing counterfactual case which ends in a vividly tragic climax. It is a book which would make the perfect Christmas gift for all those who have ‘pontificated’ about the Vatican’s policies during the Second World War. As the author notes, this is an entertainment, not to be taken too seriously. But it certainly captivates the imagination.

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2c) Merrilyn Thomas, Communing with the Enemy. Covert operations, Christianity and Cold War politics in Britain and the GDR. Oxford/New York/Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 2005. 293 pp. US-ISBN 0-8204-7177-1.

This is a book about secrets – especially about the secret activities of British and German Christians in the German Democratic Republic in the 1960s. During this period of the Cold War, a distinguished English clergyman, Bill Williams, Provost of Coventry Cathedral, took a party of young students to help rebuild a church hospital in the city of Dresden, which had been so ruthlessly devastated in the fateful RAF raid of February 1945. Outwardly, this was to be an act of reconciliation, to prove that creative enterprises can heal the wounds of the past, and to show that the Christian religion can bridge the divisions of nationality, race and politics. But this was in fact no ordinary example of the kind of Christian do-goodism which was common enough in that era. According to Merrilyn Thomas, who was one of the students involved, this whole endeavour was part of a much more subtle, secret and far-reaching game of political and psychological warfare on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

To reveal the truth behind the scenes, Thomas has done extensive research in Berlin into the newly-available archives of the former East Germany, including the papers of the notorious Stasi in the Ministry of State Security. She arrived at some striking conclusions. But she has to admit that, just because many of these covert operations were discreetly hidden, she has to make some unverifiable assumptions, all the more since the British authorities refused to allow her any access to their files for this period.

In the post-1945 period, relations between the West and the Soviet Union’s satellites, such as Communist-controlled East Germany, deteriorated rapidly. Militarily NATO erected an impenetrable barrier against aggression, while diplomatically the West refused to acknowledge the separate existence of the German Democratic Republic. On the other side, the East German authorities adopted policies of deep suspicion and vehement propaganda against the ãrevanchist fascists in West Germany and its alliesä. They refused to allow their citizens to travel freely to the West. This process only grew more obvious after the Berlin Wall was built in August 1961.

How then did it happen that this small group of British church people, mostly idealistic students, was allowed to spend several weeks in the spring of 1965 in Dresden, unopposed, even welcomed? Thomas suggests that the answer is to be found the convoluted state of relations between the East German authorities and their churches, particularly the largest group of Protestants. In the first years after the Communist take-over, a full-scale repression of the churches took place. Marxist theory had no place for Christianity in the new socialist paradise. But after several years, the governing authorities began to realize that such repression was only causing the church members to dig in and to cement their non-cooperation. A new tactic was called for. Without renouncing Marxist theory, a novel strategy combining surveillance and seduction was implemented, as Thomas infers, at the orders of the Communist dictator, Ulbricht. For this purpose, the now fully-fledged Stasi was to deploy its armies of informers, while efforts were to be made to facilitate a new Christian-Marxist dialogue.

The objective, Thomas suggests, was to create the image of a more friendly government, while isolating the church’s hard-liners, such as the Bishop of Saxony, Gottfried Noth. Such a stance would reinforce the regime’s propaganda that it stood for international peace in contrast to the militant revanchism of the NATO powers. Since the few church members who had already joined this bandwagon were known as careerists or opportunists, the possibility of getting help from sympathetic foreigners was too good to be missed. Moreover, if treated nicely, such western visitors would help to advance the cause of gaining diplomatic recognition for the GDR from their home governments. The whole operation was to be secretly controlled by the Stasi. A whole chapter is devoted to the main Stasi official, Hans-Joachim Seidowsky, whose ambiguous activities are explored on the basis of the surviving Stasi records.

Why did the British government play along with such a scheme? Thomas points out that, officially, they never did. Publicly, outright hostility to the GDR regime was the order of the day, lest Britain’s friends in West Germany should be alarmed. But unofficially, and behind the scenes, the British were willing to facilitate measures which they believed would serve to infiltrate the East German regime and eventually prepare the ground for a change, or even overthrow, of the dictatorship. Furthermore, these Foreign Office officials had been alarmed by the recurrent crises in central Europe. Instability could easily flare up into a major conflagration. Any steps which could discourage open opposition to these regimes, such as from the churches, could help to reduce any such outbursts. So co-existence with a communist state, at least temporarily, could be seen as being in Britain’s interest. Thomas suggests that much of the impetus for this kind of psychological warfare came from the fertile brain of Richard Crossman, a former member of British intelligence, and subsequently a leading Labour cabinet minister, who had long argued in favour of extending diplomatic recognition to the GDR.

How much were the participants themselves aware of these behind-the-scenes machinations? Not much, apparently. Provost Bill Williams had been warned of the unpredictability and delays in dealing with the East German authorities. But he had his own worries. He needed to raise the funds to cover his team’s expenses. He got no help from the Coventry City Council whose left-wing members were busy arranging trips for themselves at public expense to visit their comrades in East Berlin. They were openly opposed to any activity undertaken by organized religion. The relationship between Coventry City Council and Coventry Cathedral was one of mutual suspicion. Williams was also in competition with the middle-class members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation who had uncritically swallowed the East German propaganda line that they were the true champions of peace, and whose organizers Williams dismissed as “naive” and “brainless parsons”. He was determined not to be associated with any sort of “fellow travellers”, or to allow Coventry Cathedral’s reputation to be high-jacked for any other cause than his belief in overcoming the past through gestures of reparation.

Besides, Williams spoke little German, and hence was probably unaware of the range of covert activities developing on the German side. Even his colleague, Canon Paul Oestreicher, who did speak German, having been born there, and who had frequently visited East Germany, strenuously denied that he had ever worked for any intelligence agency. But as he conceded to Ms Thomas: “I can deny it as much as I like and no-one is going to believe me”. Her conclusion is that the British clergymen almost certainly did not know the extent to which they were being manipulated by the intelligence services. But they did know they were serving a political purpose aimed at the suppression of dissident voices within the GDR.

In the end, after long delays and difficulties, the Coventry visit did take place. Thomas does not go into detail about the results, but suggests that in both Britain and the GDR the impact was only marginal. Her interest is really to study the project as an example of the Cold War’s stratagems. But any exact description or evaluation was clearly beyond her reach. The Cold War thrived on misinformation and misinterpretation. Many events are still surrounded by the fog of secrecy. The historian’s task is daunting, even after the collapse of the whole Communist empire and enterprise. The survivors are naturally reticent. So while Merrilyn Thomas has been able to piece together the basic outlines of this story, in which prominent Christians in both Britain and Germany played a striking if minor role, she runs the danger of exaggerating the conspiratorial atmosphere. There were, after all, other churchmen, not mentioned at all in this account, whose efforts were directed to keeping open the lines of friendship and collaboration between the churches without any political purposes, let alone to plot against the regime. Their witness can be said to have been part of the campaign to try to maintain alternatives to the rigid and dogmatic Communist ideology which, twenty-five years later, was to succeed in bringing about the regime’s final overthrow.

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3) Journal articles:

a) Mark Noll, What happened to Christian Canada? in Church History, Vol. 71, no. 2 June 2006, p. 245ff.

Noll’s sympathetic account of the religious changes in Canada over the past fifty years seeks to explain why this nation, which was once so heavily indoctrinated with Christian values and vocabulary, has most recently become even more secularized than its southern neighbour, the USA. He finds no one single causal factor, but attributes the growth of secular nationalism and education as leading Canadians out of the previous colonial tutelage, also in religious matters. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom has undoubtedly been a major influence encouraging multiculturalism, enforcing religious tolerance and ensuring public religious neutrality. Public space has thus become de-christianized. But private spaces still retain a healthy vigor in many encouraging ways.

b) Religion, State and Society, Vol. 34, no.2, June 2006

This entire issue is devoted to the history of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany since 1933. Comparisons are made between their treatment under the Nazi and the Communist dictatorships, both of which were brutal and repellent. The experiences of this small minority sect are evaluated as paradigms of religious liberty (or its absence) under these respective political regimes. Although the major outlines of the German Jehovah’s Witnesses’ history is already known, these five essays make this information readily available to the English-speaking audience. Useful bibliographical references are included. Newly-researched evidence from the Stasi files is revealing about how the Ministry of State Security refined to perfection its system of surveillance and subversion.

One ground for the hostility displayed by the German Democratic Republic’s authorities was the fact that the Witnesses’ headquarters were in the United States, “the main enemy of socialist reconstruction and world peace”. But, interestingly, the same did not apply to the Mormons (See Newsletter, August 1998, item 4). The final essay brings personal recollections by children of Jehovah’s Witnesses under both dictatorships, which offsets the previous essays’ overemphasis on the state and police documentation. But the whole tone repeats the standard interpretation of Jehovah’s Witnesses as victims of unwarranted state repression and as heroic upholders of their religious beliefs.

c) Benjamin Ziemann, The Gospel of Psychology. Therapeutic concepts and the scientification of pastoral care in the West German Catholic Church, 1950-1980 in Central European History, Vol. 39 no. 1, March 2006, pp. 79 ff.

Ziemann’s perceptive and innovative article seeks to describe the interplay between psychology and religion in the Catholic Church of West Germany in the post-Second World War period. To begin with, the Catholic authorities had a built-in suspicion of psychoanalysis because of its association with the anti-religious ãatheistä Sigmund Freud and his advocacy of highly unsuitable models of individual freedom. By contrast, Carl Jung, whose writings stressed the psychological importance of faith and religion, received more attention. By the 1950s there were Catholics who sought to widen their practices of therapeutic counselling, and recognized that psychology might well open up new horizons. If pastoral care was to be effective and to enrich the consciences of the faithful, some understanding of personality in a psychological framework might well be useful. Group therapy and group dynamics became more popular in the late 1960s, going along with the increased emphasis on the importance of the laity after the Second Vatican Council., and the impact of what has come to be called the “68-generation” with its anti-authoritarian tones. Much of this activity was based on American models,whose anthropology was of a “positive” rational kind, and hence aroused opposition from more orthodox theologians. The author calls for more empirical study of the effects of such psychological counselling in the wider life of the church.

As we come to the close of Volume XII of this Newsletter, I would like to take this opportuity to thank those colleagues who have contributed reviews to this Newsletter during the past twelve months. I am most grateful for your help. It only remains for me to wish all of you a very happy and blessed Christmas season. I trust you will all be able to have suitable festivities, and look forward to being in touch with you again in the New Year

As we enter the watchful season of Advent, may we be full of hope for the remembrance of the coming of our Lord in the war-torn and impoverished Palestine of His day. We shall all pray that His message of peace and reconciliation may be heard throughout His world in the days and years ahead.

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

This month’s offerings concentrate on new books dealing with the Catholic Church and its responses to the crises of the twentieth century and beyond.

Contents:

1) Correction: I regret that there was an unintended error in the website cited for Christian Zionism in the October issue. I am told that it would be best if you were to go to the following URL:http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/ and around the middle of the page, in the right-hand box titled “Christian-Jewish Relations”, click on “Christian Zionism”.

2) Book reviews:

a) Schleicher and Walle, Feldpostbriefen 1939-1945
b) Trippen, Josef Kardinal Frings Vol. II
c) Theriault, Conservative Revolutionaries
d) Kaufmann, Consuming Visions. Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine

3) Book notes: Vatican-Israel Accords

2a) Karl-Theodor Schleicher and Heinrich Walle, eds., Aus Feldpostbriefen junger Christen 1939-1945: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Katholischen-Jugend im Felde, Munich: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005. 413 Pp. ISBN 3-315-08759-1. (This review was first printed in H-German on Wednesday, July 16th 2006, and is here reproduced by kind permission of the author.)

This book is a collection of letters from the front sent by specifically Catholic soldiers who belonged to Catholic youth groups that were persecuted by the Nazi regime since 1936 and prohibited since 1938. The editors regard the letters as a witness to the rejection of what Catholics called the Trinitarian Dogma of the Nazi regime, namely: the National Socialist Party, the Third Reich, and the German Volk. The soldiers of these letters apparently understood well the basic teaching of the Catholic resistance fighter Alfred Delp. He argued that a soldier do his duty to the fatherland which was a matter of natural inclination, but question (even resist as Delp did) demands for loyalty to the current state leadership which was a matter of historical fortuity. Implied was that while these Catholic soldiers could be patriotic, they could not identify with the criminal goals of the regime.

The research for this book was done in several archives, the findings were then discussed with various witnesses of the time and a manuscript was proposed. This manuscript was then further reviewed by ten leaders of the youth group association, witnesses, and experts. These in turn agreed that a book on this topic required an essay that discussed the development and situation of the Catholic Youth in the Third Reich. For this task, the editor Karl-Theodor Schleicher won the cooperation of the military historian Dr. Heinrich Walle who, as a student, was also a member of the Catholic Youth Group of Cologne (Bund Neudeutschland-Köln) to which the soldiers who wrote these letters from the front belonged.

Although a military commander and historian, Walle also studied Catholic theology. His explanatory introduction of the Nazi times, the Catholic situation within it, the Catholic Youth groups and their ideals, the content and quality of the letters, what could be said and what not, is exemplary. While the letters are subjective documents, they are fascinating because of their nearness to the actual experiences of an ever hardening war. Most of these soldiers who found themselves in the continual presence of death tried to reach one goal: to be ready for – the last. One wrote, “finally I reached the place where I could say: Lord, your will alone!” And he continued: “I believe in a kind of collective guilt of the Volk. And thus, by God, it is better that one upright man die than that dozens be massacred” (p.19).

Front letters were censored. Any hint of doubt of the final victory (Endsieg), or of the senselessness of war, or any critique of the NS-regime and its representatives was considered under military law to be an act of eroding the power of defence and was punishable by death. The law was known to both writers and recipients of these letters.

Nevertheless, Walle argues that these letters give an insider view of the German military. And while scholars have reached a consensus that, from the beginning, the German military was drawn into the National Socialist enslavement and elimination program, Walle argues that such a picture represents an external perspective. Since only a small sample, a mere splinter, of the thirty to forty million front letters has been analyzed, Walle argues that quantitative conclusions about the moral position of “the” German soldier of World War II is hardly possible. It would be a post-factum confirmation of Nazi-propaganda, if one were to lump together all these men as champions of National Socialism. Many a soldier at the front found himself in the tragic condition, furthermore, of having to realize that the goal of the enemy was in no sense of the imagination the liberation of Germany from National Socialism, but rather the total destruction of the fatherland. The conduct of war today, as we witness it daily through the media, would lead one to affirm Walle’s insider assessment of the war then.

The new German scholarship, whether this book, or Georg Denzler’s Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort (Resistance is not the right word, 2003), or Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Gerhard Paul’s edited volumeKarrieren der Gewalt (Careers of Violence, 2004) or Stefan Schmitz’s edited volume of the soldier Willy Peter Reese’s Mir selber seltsam fremd (A Stranger to Myself, 2005) or my own book, New Religions and the Nazis (2006); all these books and many others are outstanding for one characteristic: by carefully differentiating who committed what deeds, they are giving new insights into the horrors of that regime, its war, and the Holocaust.

Finally, with one exception, the choice of material is excellent. Particularly useful is the inclusion in the Appendix of a confidential letter dated 28 October 1936 from the Reich’s Youth Leadership. It makes for harrowing reading when it is understood how systematic and calculated the persecution of Catholic youths was. It shows what I found to be a general tendency in Nazi persecution, namely, learning to use the enemy’s own methods and form against them. In this case, using Catholic religious forms and rites to indoctrinate the masses with National Socialist ideas.

The choice of material that I found surprising is the archbishop of Freiburg, Dr. Conrad Grüber’s pastoral letter of 8 May 1945. From this letter it is clear that he understood the National Socialist worldview all too well: its rejection of Christianity as Jewish-religion, the Regime’s use of the Concordat as political seduction, its notion that the Volk was the measure of all things which had the consequence of destroying all normative ethics. Unfortunately, for a number of years Grüber was enthusiastic about the Nazi regime.

Karla Poewe, University of Calgary

2b) Norbert Trippen, Josef, Kardinal Frings (1887-1978), Vol. II, Sein Wirken für die Weltkirche und seine letzten Bischofsjahre. (Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Series B: Forschungen, Vol 104) Paderborn: Schöningh, 2005.

This second half of a two-volume biography of the later Josef Cardinal Frings is, like the first, clearly a labour of love. The author, Prelate Norbert Trippen, is professor church history at Bonn University and a member of Cologne’s cathedral chapter. The emphasis of this volume, which covers the years from the early 1950s until the Cologne Archbishop’s death in 1978, is on two areas of the work of Cardinal Frings, first as the initiator of German Catholic development and programmes, and second as a leading figure at the Second Vatican Council, where he led the efforts of the German-speaking bishops. The first half of this volume is devoted to Fring’s gradual development of a large-scale foreign aid programme sponsored by the Catholic Church in post-war western Germany and funded by impressive annual drives during Advent and Lent. Initial contacts led to a close partnership with the archdiocese of Tokyo, which included considerable financial support for the Jesuit-sponsored Sophia University – donations from Cologne made it possible to open a law school at the university – and for the construction of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Tokyo. Later in the 1950s, following these first experiences, Frings coaxed his fellow bishops into creating Misereor, a programme to combat hunger and disease in the developing world, comparable to Catholic Relief Services in the U.S. Even before governments established departments for foreign assistance and economic cooperation, Frings was convinced by his vicar-general, Joseph Teusch, to insist that Misereor innovate by encouraging self-help, rather than simply offer traditional works of charity. How unusual this was, Trippen illustrates by the fact that Frings requested papal permission to begin this work abroad, not only because of its new approach to aid, but also because of concerns that perhaps diocesan and national churches should not engage in activities traditionally carried out or at least coordinated by the Holy Father.

Once the successes of Misereor became apparent, in part a consequence of Germany’s economic recovery, the Pontifical Commission for Latin America inquired whether or not the German episcopate might see fit to take on particular responsibility for supporting the Church in Latin America. Again Frings played an important role in overcoming resistance to such endeavours. Thus, in the early sixties, the German bishops established Adveniat as a special collection period for Latin America during Advent, while Misereor with its broader focus took on the form of a Lenten sacrifice.

Trippen devotes even more detail to the contributions Frings made to the Second Vatican Council. According to Trippen, one should count Frings among those who embraced John XXIII’s call for an aggiornamento and who led the bishops in breaking the resistance of those gathered around Cardinal Ottaviani who wished to obstruct the councilâs development towards an understanding of the Church both self-confident and willing to serve, rather than triumphalist and authoritarian. Interestingly, this volume is dedicated to Fring’s advisors at the Council, foremost among them Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, then professor of theology at Bonn University. This volume, published in 2005, was completed before Benedict XVI assumed his office. It throws interesting light on the directions of the young Professor Ratzinger, which clearly encouraged Frings to pursue a thoughtfully modernizing line. For those familiar with the development of Benedict XVI’s thought, however, there is little new or surprising here.

In discussing the role of Frings at the council, Trippen provides an almost day-by-day account of events, both in the plenary sessions and in the various other meetings surrounding the council. Trippen shows that Frings overcame his increasing age and blindness to carry on. In an attempt to demonstrate the importance of Frings at the council, Trippen leads the reader through the lengthy deliberative processes that produced Lumen Gentium, Gaudium Spes and other equally important documents. Here is seems the author could have selected more carefully the most relevant passages and focused more precisely on the changes to the documents that can be attributed to interventions by Frings. For those familiar with the scholarship on the council, there will be little new here; for those who seek better to understand Frings, many questions are left unanswered.

During the later stages of the council, Frings increasingly relied on Cardinal Doepfner, Archbishop of Munich and Freising. Thus it seemed natural that Doepfner would become the first chairman of the newly formed German bishopsâ conference, which replaced the centuries-old Fulda and Bavarian bishops’ conferences. Frings himself opposed the establishment of an institutionalized structure at the national level for fear that it would infringe on the necessary autonomy and on the responsibilities of individual bishops.

While Trippen provides man interesting details about the internal politics of the German hierarchy relating to charitable works and about the council, at times one misses both a broader context and especially some critical analysis. To read this volume, even more than the first half of the biography, Frings could do no wrong.

In contrast to the first volume, which addressed a broad spectrum of issues Frings faced as priest and archbishop, this volume largely ignores his primary role as Archbishop of Cologne, i.e.. as leader of his flock. Nothing is said, for example, about the integration of refugees and expellees from the East, about the arrival of guest workers in the late fifties and early sixties to work in the large factories of Cologne, or about any of the challenges German Catholics faced in the light of the economic miracle, rearmament, and Germany’s return to relative stability. In this regard, this is a frustrating work.

Still, Trippen has provided a useful account of Frings as leader of the Church in Germany, and its contribution both to the aggioramento of the wider Church and to the return of Germany as a constructive actor on the global stage.
Martin Menke, Rivier College

2c) Barbara Theriault. “Conservative Revolutionaries”: Protestant and Catholic Churches in Germany After Radical Political Change in the 1990s. New York: Berghahn Books, 2004. vii + 188 pp. Appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $50.00 (cloth), ISBN 1-57181-667-4. (This review first appeared on H-German on July 18, 2006, and is reprinted by kind permission of the author)

Good Bye, Luther!

The drama of German reunification played out primarily on the main stages of politics and the economy. The bankruptcy of the East German model in these areas resulted in little opposition to the competing FRG model. By comparison, social institutions were a mere sideshow. Yet society and culture–less malleable to the pressures of the SED state–have by the same token been more resistant to merger on West German terms. Barbara Theriault analyzes the impact of reunification on two key social institutions, the Protestant and Catholic churches, looking particularly at three areas–chaplaincy in the military, religious instruction in the schools and social welfare institutions–in which the churches’ interface with state and society created potential for political conflict. In each of these policy areas, the West German model of a highly visible, legally privileged social role for churches (Volkskirche) contrasted with the GDR model of churches largely disenfranchised in terms of social functions. Theriault’s study is based largely on interviews and secondary source material. It is the only monograph in English to deal in depth with the consequences of German reunification for churches’ role in society.

Employing a sociological framework, the author’s main purpose is to explore the “politics of institutionalization, or the discourse and deliberation attendant to the resolution of these important policy issues. Theriault analyzes metaphors used by church groups as they sought either to legitimize the “institutional transfer” of the western model to the East or alternatively reject/alter this transfer. Protestants largely used the metaphor of “church within socialism,” developed under Bishop Albrecht Schonherr following the accommodation with the regime during the 1970s (pp. 29-36); Catholics adhered to a strategy of “political abstinence” identified with Cardinal Alfred Bengsch (pp. 21-29). Although 1989 is usually viewed as the triumph of the Catholic metaphor over the Protestant one, there was in fact no “Stunde Null” after 1990. Thus, along with pragmatic considerations, these metaphors continued to hold sway. Theriault argues that these contrasting metaphors are to be explained neither by confession (Protestant vs. Catholic) nor by majority/minority status, but rather by the influence of key church leaders.

Based on these two metaphors, the author discerns two groups that remained relatively consistent in their views: those advocating adoption of the West German model (whom Theriault labels “reformers”) and those rejecting this model and arguing for the retention of positive features of the GDR model (Theriault designates members of this group “conservative revolutionaries”). The fronts in this debate do not align neatly along East-West lines, although more conservative revolutionaries are to be found in the East.

In a most interesting aspect of the work, the author employs Albert Hirschman’s typology of argumentation to organize the threads into a coherent whole and demonstrate a tactical consistency in the positions.[1] For example, the “reformers” argue (pp. 74-76) that the state-sanctioned social role of churches in the military, education and social welfare will provide opportunities for mission in the dechristianized setting of the GDR; failure to take advantage of such opportunities will leave Protestants vulnerable to resurgent Catholic influence (“imminent danger thesis”). For their part, the “conservative revolutionaries” argue (pp. 71-73) that the West German model will endanger the proven, parish-based models of the East (“jeopardy argument”), will cost the churches hard-won credibility and leave them dependent on the state (“perversity argument”). They are bound in any case to fail in the context of a secularized society (“futility argument”).

Theriault shows that the resolution of these issues was characterized by more compromise and incrementalism than is generally assumed. To be sure, the western model regarding social welfare reigned supreme, largely for financial reasons. The churches deferred final resolution of the military chaplaincy issue until 2003, permitting a dual system in the interim. As a harbinger of broader challenges to the West German model from growing religious diversity in Germany, the issue of religious instruction in the schools produced the greatest political conflict: the proposal by the SPD government in Brandenburg to replace religious instruction with a secular course on ethics and religion was fought unsuccessfully by both churches in the courts.

Several omissions flaw this otherwise comprehensive and authoritative treatment. First, confessional differences _within_ the Protestant camp should be highlighted more. The more socially and politically active Union churches (Berlin, Church Province of Saxony) are well-represented among the “conservative revolutionaries,” but voices of the more politically deferential Lutheran Churches (Saxony, Thuringia, Mecklenburg) seem missing in this narrative. Closer to the SPD even before 1989, the Union churches were naturally more critical of the FRG model in many respects. Second, more treatment is needed of the ambivalent role of Manfred Stolpe–chief lawyer of the GDR churches yet later (as Ministerpräsident of Brandenburg) head of the state that rejected the western model of religious instruction. Finally, Thierault leaves unaddressed the major issue of church finance. The resolution of this issue foreshadowed the extension of the West German model more generally. Having lost their official status in the 1950s, many Protestant “conservative revolutionaries” came to see the normative value of a church supported by “voluntary” contributions rather than a church tax collected by the state. Early in 1990, however, the West German churches made it clear that continuation of their substantial subsidies to the weaker eastern churches depended on restoration of the church tax system in the former GDR. This step, in turn, prejudiced the outcome on the issues Theriault treats.

Thierault’s terminology may leave the reader (and the subjects themselves) somewhat confused. Extension of the West German Volkskirche model is labeled as “reform”; retention of the status quo, minority-church model of the GDR is propounded by “conservative revolutionaries.” Illustrative of ensuing verbal contortions is the statement found on p. 77: “Reformers … supported the West German status quo, thus becoming reactionaries themselves.” Perhaps “restorationist” and “voluntarist,” respectively, would have proven more apt characterizations, without doing injustice to the motives of the two groups.

In my view, however, the divide between these groups should not be overstated. Despite losing the privileges associated with the West German model and flirting with the notion of “free churches” in their dialogues with various American churches, GDR churches never relinquished their claim to speak for society as a whole, nor did they jettison the trappings of the Volkskirche. By the same token, West German churches had long been aware of the societal forces challenging religious Modelldeutschland. Theriault’s conclusion that “defenders of the East German status quo were also successful in institutionalizing some principles” (p. 141) thus comports well with the notion of greater continuity in social-cultural life than in the political-economic sphere.

Note

[1]. Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991)

Robert F.Goeckel, SUNY, Geneseo, New York

2d) Suzanne K.Kaufmann, Consuming Visions. Mass Culture and the Lourdes shrine. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 2005 255 Pp. ISBN 0-8014-4248-6.

In early 1858 , Bernadette Soubirous, a peasant girl from the remote hamlet of Lourdes in the foothills of the French Pyrenees saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Within months, thousands flocked to meet the visionary or visit the site. Within ten years Lourdes had become an officially endorsed place of pilgrimage, and by the end of the century was receiving close to half a million guests a year. The anticlerical officials of the Third Republic were scandalized by what seemed to them to be an outburst of rural political reaction. Liberals and Protestants were appalled by what they saw as a revival of mediaeval superstition. Others were dismayed by the swift growth of commercial enterprises around the shrine, greedily selling religious trinkets, postcards and votive pictures, and seemingly despoiling the sacredness of Bernadetteâs vision.

Suzanne Kaufmann, however, is intrigued by this contrast and seeks to analyze the success with which these modern commercial aspects were so speedily blended into the ancient forms of piety. She is interested in how popular religiosity was promoted by the spirit of modern commercialism, which she sees as a necessary component to the development of such shrines. Lourdes is only the most obvious example, having so rapidly become the best-known and most successful of all Catholic pilgrimage sites in contemporary Europe. She analyses how the use of modern technologies served to promote religious devotion and to direct it into newer channels for mass consumption.

This whole process was always controversial. Intellectuals continually poured scorn on popular piety, while snobbish Catholics deplored the massification and trivialization of their beloved heritage. Anticlericals, especially in the medical profession, attacked Lourdesâ reputation for therapeutic cures, and sought to disparage the whole enterprise as an outdated relic of bygone fanaticism. But Kaufmann makes a convincing case that the skillful use of modern commercial practices, particularly the building of railways, new advertising techniques and the mass production of religious devotional goods, enabled a much larger proportion of the population, especially rural women, to share in an unparalleled religious experience of great value to them. At a time of considerable church instability, pilgrimages to such places as Lourdes revived French Catholic worship and satisfied real spiritual needs.

There was also a political dimension. After the Third Republic adopted an explicitly anticlerical stance, the popularity of Lourdes became for Catholics an important means of stressing the fact that religion mattered. Even hardened atheists could not deny that the whole economy of the Pyrenees region benefited greatly from Lourdes. Kaufman shows that its boosters took many lessons in self-advertisement from secular metropolitan models. Lourdes catered for mass tourism, but did so cheaply and efficiently. Its hotels, shops, diversions, tours and other attractions successfully combined a religious tone with a progressively modern emphasis. Even the poor farmer’s wife, who could only afford a couple of postcards, or the smallest replica of the grotto’s statues, could gain a feeling of belonging to a wider spiritual fraternity. There were, of course, complaints about the exploitation of naive pilgrims and the cultivation of superstitious worship of relics. Nevertheless on the whole the defects were outshone by the impressive dignity and ceremonial pageantry of the shrine’s guardians. In catering for ever-growing numbers, however, the simplicity and traditional aura of yesteryear was lost. Bernadette herself came to be transformed in to a sanctified commercial image. Had she been able to return twenty years later, she would not have recognized the place.

The shrine’s Catholic authorities were obliged to spend considerable time in thwarting unscrupulous merchants and manufacturers, but this led them to reflect on the proper balance between a capitalist market economy and Christian ethical behaviour. Accusations of clerical simony or purveying of false relics were of course nothing new. But the virulence of the debates in the late nineteenth century was in fact all part of the attempt to define the character of post-imperial France. Even the most outspoken anticlericals, such as Emile Zola, could not deny the extraordinary fervour displayed by the pilgrims who visited Lourdes every day. This blocked attempts to push religion back into a private realm, irrelevant to the main stream of national life.

In part to counter such criticisms, the authorities at Lourdes came to place ever greater emphasis on the shrineâs function as a place of healing. Its core meaning became to tend the sick and to pray for miracles of recovery. Kaufmann argues that this development also owed much to the impact of a commercializing and modernizing world. Even though the association between holy shrines and healing cures had a long history, the focus in Lourdes was not on the past but on catering for the emergence of a mass audience and clientele. Popular faith in the efficacy of Lourdes cures grew rapidly, but necessitated some regulatory controls. Physical up-to-date facilities for drinking or bathing in the sacred waters had to be built on a sufficient scale, and records had to be meticulously kept to substantiate the claims of miraculous healing. Expert doctors were employed to certify that the cures were both spontaneous and long-lasting. The imposing authority of the medical professionals now came to be as important as that of the priests. These cures were no longer seen as proof of Bernadette’s visions, but rather were advanced as part of the much wider goal of regaining the soul of France.

Mobilizing the cured, and bringing them back to Lourdes to participate in large-scale celebrations, proved to be highly popular. In 1908, for the fiftieth anniversary, over a million people came to Lourdes. Women, particularly, who had been miraculously cured of their ailments, were now feted by a marveling public It was a pre-view of the later film-star adoration, but was equally transient, a very real example of modern mass culture.

Kaufmann’s final chapter looks at the ways in which Lourdes’ claims were treated in the popular press of the later nineteenth century. Its very modern phenomenon of publishing sensational stories for the sake of selling newspapers frequently took advantage of the Lourdes patients and their cures, which only inflamed the political tensions between anticlericals and devout Catholics. It did little to bolster Lourdes’ credibility.

Yet Lourdes survived even the venomous attacks during the process of the disestablishment of the Catholic Church in 1905. Popular support actually grew, despite being denied any official recognition by the French state. Catholic devotion, then as now, continued to uphold the shrine and its mission of healing and pilgrimage. Paradoxically, as Kaufmann points out, the very success of modern publicity for a mass market produced the best-known advertisement for religious devotion in the 1943 Hollywood film The Song of Bernadette. Lourdes still has to deal with this ambivalent legacy. JSC

3) Book notes: The Vatican-Israel Accords: Political, Legal and Theological Contexts. edited by Marshall J.Breger. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. 2004 Pp. xvii,392. $55.00. The following review first appeared in The Catholic Historical Review 92:2 (2006),and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

Marshall Breger is professor of law at Columbus School of Law, The Catholic University of America. This excellent collection of essays will be a “must read” for anyone interested in the Midle East, international politics and law, or Catholic-Jewish relations. It examines the historic 1993 accords between the Holy See and the State of Israel from a variety of scholarly points of view. The authors include participants in the negotiations which led to the agreement, making it the definitive interpretation of the accords and their historical and religious implications.

Lorenzo Cremonesi outlines the stages of diplomatic negotiations that led to the accord. David-Maria A. Jaeger, O.F.M., a drafter of the text, and Leonard Hammer analyze how it changed the legal relationship of the Catholic Church and Israel. Silvio Ferrari places this accord in the context of other conventions between Church and States since the Second Vatican Council in general, while Rafael Palomino compares it specifically with the Church-State agreement in Spain.

Roland Minnerath discusses how the Catholic Church understands Concordats “from a Doctrinal and Pragmatic Perspective”. David Rosen comments on the relations between the Vatican and Israel since the signing of the accord. Moshe Hirsch analyzes the issue of proselytism under the accord and international law. Geoffrey Watson discusses its implications for a range of issues associated with pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Giorgio Fillbeck and Ruth Lapidoth explain the understandings of freedom of religion in Catholic teaching and under Israeli law, respectively. Silvio Ferrari analyzes the Vatican’s policies and practices with regard to the Middle East during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. Drew Christiansen presents the situation of the Palestinian Christians. Jack Bemporad overviews Catholic-Jewish relations since the Holocaust.

Appendices provide the texts of the agreement itself, along with its implementing “Legal Personality Agreement” and the “Basic Agreement” between the Holy See and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Richard Mathes provides personal recollections of the informal discussions that took place between representatives of the Church and the State of Israel at the Pontifical Institute of Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center.

Eugene Fisher, Washington, D.C., USA

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

I take the opportunity this month to send you a statement issued on August 22nd by four church leaders in the Middle East, the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism.

Without necessarily endorsing the opinions expressed, I think it is an important document for Church historians and members of our Association to be aware of.

Please note that your comments on the contents of these Newsletters are always welcome. But please also note that you should NOT press the reply button, unless you want your views to be shared by all 500 subscribers. Instead, please send them to me at my own address = jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Contents:

1) The Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism

2) Book reviews

a) Clements, Bonhoeffer and Britain
b) Roth, Ethics during and after the Holocaust

1) Comment by the Editor:

The current crisis in the Middle East has clearly done grievous harm to the efforts to promote dialogue and understanding between Jews, Christians and Muslims. But it has also heightened tensions within the Christian community. One small segment, namely the supporters of Christian Zionism, which is largely supported by conservative churches in the United States, has unequivocally declared its wholehearted support for the military policies of the government of Israel, and has drawn parallels between Israel’s opponents in the Hezbollah movement and the Nazis. On the other side, the leaders of four main-stream churches in the Middle East, the Roman Catholic, the Syrian orthodox, the Anglican/Episcopal and the Lutheran churches, issued on August 22nd a Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism . This document explicitly denounced the false teachings’ of Christian Zionist doctrines, which they claim facilitate racial exclusivity and perpetual war . Instead these church leaders call for support from Christian churches on every continent to seek a peaceful settlement based on love, justice and reconciliation.

Many of you, I know, have a continuing interest in Christian-Jewish relations in general, and specifically in the role of the Christian churches in the state of Israel. Others, I feel, may regret the inflammatory language but agree with these church leaders in deploring the exploitation of theological concepts concerning an eventual Armageddon for more immediate political purposes. So, in view of the significance of this statement, and for the sake of historical accuracy, I send you the complete text, which can also be found, together with rejoinders from several organizations through the following link:

http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/topics.christian_Zionism.htm (This website is the best source for up-to-date staatements by various churches on the Middle East in general and Christian-Jewish relations in particular).

Statement by the Patriarch and Local Heads of Churches In Jerusalem

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

Christian Zionism is a modern theological and political movement that embraces the most extreme ideological positions of Zionism, thereby becoming detrimental to a just peace within Palestine and Israel. The Christian Zionist programme provides a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism and militarism. In its extreme form, it places an emphasis on apocalyptic events leading to the end of history rather than living Christ’s love and justice today.

We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as false teaching that corrupts the biblical message of love, justice and reconciliation.

We further reject the contemporary alliance of Christian Zionist leaders and organizations with elements in the governments of Israel and the United States that are presently imposing their unilateral pre-emptive borders and domination over Palestine. This inevitably leads to unending cycles of violence that undermine the security of all peoples of the Middle East and the rest of the world.

We reject the teachings of Christian Zionism that facilitate and support these policies as they advance racial exclusivity and perpetual war rather than the gospel of universal love, redemption and reconciliation taught by Jesus Christ. Rather than condemn the world to the doom of Armageddon we call upon everyone to liberate themselves from the ideologies of militarism and occupation. Instead, let them pursue the healing of the nations!

We call upon Christians in Churches on every continent to pray for the Palestinian and Israeli people, both of whom are suffering as victims of occupation and militarism. These discriminative actions are turning Palestine into impoverished ghettos surrounded by exclusive Israeli settlements. The establishment of the illegal settlements and the construction of the Separation Wall on confiscated Palestinian land undermines the viability of a Palestinian state as well as peace and security in the entire region.

We call upon all Churches that remain silent, to break their silence and speak for reconciliation with justice in the Holy Land.

Therefore, we commit ourselves to the following principles as an alternative way:

We affirm that all people are created in the image of God. In turn they are called to honor the dignity of every human being and to respect their inalienable rights.

We affirm that Israelis and Palestinians are capable of living together within peace, justice and security.

We affirm that Palestinians are one people, both Muslim and Christian. We reject all attempts to subvert and fragment their unity.

We call upon all people to reject the narrow world view of Christian Zionism and other ideologies that privilege one people at the expense of others.

We are committed to non-violent resistance as the most effective means to end the illegal occupation in order to attain a just and lasting peace.

With urgency we warn that Christian Zionism and its alliances are justifying colonization, apartheid and empire-building.

God demands that justice be done. No enduring peace, security or reconciliation is possible without the foundation of justice. The demands of justice will not disappear. The struggle for justice must be pursued diligently and persistently but non-violently.

“What does the Lord require of you, to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

This is where we take our stand. We stand for justice. We can do no other. Justice alone guarantees a peace that will lead to reconciliation with a life of security and prosperity for all the peoples of our Land. By standing on the side of justice, we open ourselves to the work of peace – and working for peace makes us children of God.

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (2 Cor 5:19)

His Beatitude Patriarch Michel Sabbah
Latin Patriarchate, Jerusalem

Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad,
Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Jerusalem

Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal,
Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East

Bishop Munib Younan,
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land

August 22, 2006

2a) Keith Clements, Bonhoeffer and Britain. London: Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2006 154 Pp. ISBN 0 85169 307 5

One of the interesting, but little-known chapters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life was the eighteen months he spent in Britain from October 1933 to March 1935 as pastor to two small German Lutheran parishes in south London. He had come to escape the increasingly tense situation within the German Evangelical Church, following the take-over of power in the church hierarchies by pro-Nazi elements in the summer of 1933. This was to be only a temporary posting, before he was called back to direct a seminary for the newly-founded Confessing Church. But his experience in Britain and the contacts he made there were highly formative, and added greatly to his ecumenical experience and vision. We are therefore grateful to Keith Clements, recently retired as General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches, for retracing Bonhoeffer’s footsteps, his friendships and his reflections about Britain in this brief but vivid depiction of the young German pastor’s impressions, and the legacy he left behind. Particularly valuable are the numerous photographs of places associated with Bonhoeffer’s stay during this period.

In fact, Bonhoeffer had already paid a few days’ visit to Britain in 1931, as a German delegate to a meeting of the rather august World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. This ecumenical body was strongly, if rather sentimentally, interested in the cause of peace, but Bonhoeffer found it singularly lacking in any coherent theology. But it was there that he first met Bishop George Bell, already one of the leading figures of the world church scene. Despite his reservations, Bonhoeffer accepted the invitation to act as Youth Secretary for the World Alliance in central Europe. He had to organize seminars and conferences, which necessarily brought him in touch with the international ecumenical church leaders.

So, on his arrival in Britain in October 1933 he was already known and welcomed. Bishop Bell’s diocese was in Chichester, near Brighton, on England’s south coast, and only a short ride from London. He very quickly invited this young German pastor to come down to Chichester, who was so unique amongst his countrymen for his sympathy with the cause of peace. Indeed Bell encouraged him in his ambition to go out to India to visit Gandhi – a project which never came off. But Bell’s interest in Dietrich was also prompted by the fact that here was a first-hand source of inside information about what was happening in the German Evangelical Church, where developments were already causing alarm and dismay among the ecumenical church leaders, especially Bell. In particular, the Nazi antisemitic campaign and the dismissal of Jews from Germany’s civil service was taken as a direct blow against the international community. In the German Evangelical Church itself, the proposal to implement the so-called Aryan clause, and thus to eject all those of Jewish origin from the German church, led Bell to mobilize support in Britain against such a step. The Archbishop of Canterbury was persuaded to intervene with the German Ambassador in protest. All this meant that Bonhoeffer’s advice to the British ecclesiastics was highly important.

Bonhoeffer found that his English-based German colleagues in charge of other expatriate parishes shared his views about the scandalous behaviour of the so-called German Christians, whose pro-Nazi fervour was so misleading their congregations. The National Synod in Wittenberg in September 1933, where Hitler’s appointee had been made Reich Bishop, and the subsequent November meeting in Berlin, where a leading German Christian had called for Îliberation’ from the Old Testament, and for a purely racial German Christianity, were bad enough. The Reformation faith was being eviscerated. German paganism was flaring up.

These developments caused widespread alarm and disgust in British circles. And luckily for Bonhoeffer he found that his principal lay supporters, such as Baron Bruno Schršder, were equally rock-solid in resisting these Nazi attempts to overthrow their Lutheran heritage. With their support Bonhoeffer was able to draft a statement to be sent to the Reich church government warning that, if this tendency continued, the close ties between the British-based parishes and the mother church in Germany would be broken. This in turn led to his being summoned back to Berlin to receive a reprimand from the newly-appointed head of the Evangelical Church foreign office, Theodore Heckel. Bonhoeffer, backed by Schršder, refused to toe the line. And subsequently the German parishes in Britain solemnly resolved that they consider themselves belonging intrinsically to the Confessing Church and as such refused to acknowledge the authority of Heckel or his superiors in the German Christian hierarchy.

Throughout 1934, the British church leaders’ disillusionment with Hitler’s ‘new’ Germany grew apace. Hence they found the stalwart resistance of the Confessing Church, as expressed in the Barmen Declaration of May 1934, to express what they hoped would prevail. Bonhoeffer helped to draft a protest to be issued by Bell in June 1934 in the name of the Universal Christian Council of Life and Work protesting the imposition on the German church of state-sponsored coercion and racial categories incompatible with Christian principles.
The high point of this collaboration came at the next international ecumenical meeting of August 1934, held on the island of Fanš in Denmark. Here, under Bell’s chairmanship, Bonhoeffer gave an emotionally-charged address calling on the whole church community to commit itself to peace. It was a totally un-German pronouncement quite out of tune with the climate that prevailed in Bonhoeffer’s homeland. We would not be far wrong to see something of the English influence in Bonhoeffer’s words.

Given the multiplicity of Bonhoeffer’s commitments to the international ecumenical community s well as in Germany, how did he find time to look after his two congregations? Keith Clements rightly poses this question, but finds that the surviving evidence shows that Bonhoeffer was conscientious in his duties to his parishioners. In return, several of them were able to recall many years later the respect and admiration they felt for his pastoral care.

Bonhoeffer did find time, however, to widen his acquaintance with the Church of England outside London. In particular, he got Bishop Bell’s help in facilitating visits to several Anglican theological training colleges, which impressed him greatly, especially the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, near Leeds. Here he found that the priorities in training for ordinands were quite different from Germany. At Mirfield, the prime emphasis was on the times of corporate prayer. This was the inspiring cement which bound the community’s life together. The discipline of prayer, and reciting of the Psalms, was the basis of their discipleship. This experience touched Bonhoeffer deeply, and was reflected in the kind of daily disciplines he sought to inculcate when he was given the task of establishing a similar seminary for the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde.

Bonhoeffer’s career, after he was called back to Germany in early 1935, became more and more engrossed with mobilizing the opposition to Nazi tyranny. However, unlike his colleague and close friend, Franz Hildebrandt, who was obliged to flee to England on account of his partial Jewish origins, or Dietrich’s sister and brother-in-law similarly situated, Bonhoeffer never thought of himself as called to live in exile. Even when he was given the chance in 1939 to remain in the United States, he rejected this opportunity. As he wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr, he would lose the right to participate in the life of the German church after the war if he did not share the sufferings of his people during it. This should not be seen as an expression of German national solidarity. To the contrary, Bonhoeffer was the only pastor known to be praying for Germany’s defeat. But it was his contacts with the outside world, particularly in Britain, which sustained his confidence that Nazi totalitarianism would be overthrown. And the alternative future for which the German resisters were planning owed much to the ideals laid out by the English churchmen like William Temple, Joe Oldham and George Bell, all of whom Bonhoeffer esteemed highly.

After the outbreak of war in 1939, Bonhoeffer never again visited Britain. But he cherished all the more such indirect contacts as were possible. As he was drawn more and more into the conspiracy against Hitler, the planners recognized his usefulness as a channel of communication to the other side. Hence they arranged for him to be employed as an agent of the military Abwehr and given the task of assessing foreign church opinion. In reality Bonhoeffer used the opportunities to leave Germany for neutral countries, such as Switzerland and Sweden, to renew his contacts with his British friends and to send messages to his sister in Oxford. The most notable occasion was his last visit to Sweden in May 1942 when he once again met up with Bishop Bell. His object was to convince the bishop, and through him the British government, that the German resistance movement was a serious reality, and that it intended to destroy the Nazi regime and reverse its murderous policies. He also revealed to Bell the names of the chief figures involved.

Clements does not make clear – as Bonhoeffer’s previous biographers did not make clear – what exactly was said at this meeting. Did Bonhoeffer really think that a bishop – even one as experienced as Bell – could have such a significant impact on the British government’s policies as to persuade it to seek a negotiated peace? Or did he give Bell the impression that the resistance movement had a wide measure of popular support in Germany, which in fact it never achieved? Did Bell not warn the conspirators that open support from Britain was highly unlikely, or did his wishful thinking outweigh his political judgment? Or was he overly impressed by Bonhoeffer’s open acknowledgment of Germany’s need for a penitential peace to atone for her aggressions and war crimes?

Certainly Clements is quite right in his view that this meeting reinforced Bonhoeffer’s sense of solidarity with the international Christian community, whose British members he knew best. But shortly afterwards Bonhoeffer was arrested and all possible contacts ceased. Nevertheless, even in the grim desolate circumstances of the Gestapo’s prisons, Bonhoeffer continued to uphold his belief in a better world and a better church to come, as outlined by his British counterparts. And, as Clements notes, it was exactly this spirit which upheld Bonhoeffer to the end. On the day before he was taken off to Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945, Bonhoeffer’s last recorded words were spoken – in English – to a fellow prisoner, Captain Payne Best. He asked Best to pass a message, if possible, to Bishop George Bell. Tell him that with him I believe in the reality of our Christian brotherhood that rises above all national conflicts and interests and that our victory is certain .
The next morning, at dawn, he was executed.

It was a notable act of courage that in July 1945, at a time when the British press was burning with indignation about the atrocities committed in German concentration camps, and inflaming public opinion against everything German, Bishop Bell undertook to organize a memorial service in the heart of London for the one good German he knew, who had paid the ultimate price. The service was broadcast and was the means by which Bonhoeffer’s parents first learnt of his death. Clements gives extracts from Bell’s moving tribute to his martyred friend.
He also has a final chapter on Bonhoeffer’s legacy in Britain, which points out how his writings were to become an important challenge and inspiration in the ecumenical post-war world, especially his prophetic call to the universal church to resist tyranny and oppression. It is therefore most fitting that Bonhoeffer was chosen to be one of the ten twentieth-century martyrs whose witness on behalf of the world-wide Christian community led to their statues being placed in 1998 on the portico of Westminster Abbey, the very citadel of British Christianity. It symbolizes the bond, in both life and death, linking Bonhoeffer and Britain. JSC

2b) John K. Roth, Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 225 pages, ISBN: 1403933774

John Roth is not a contemporary church historian or even a historian for that matter, but rather a self-described Christian philosopher “tripped up by Holocaust history” (ix). The founding director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College, where he is a member of the philosophy and religious studies department, recalls being haunted by reading Elie Wiesel’s Night thirty-five years ago. The scenes of Wiesel’s horrific journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau where the Nazis murdered his mother, father, and little sister made an indelible impression on Roth. Wiesel’s description of Madam Schächter’s torturous screams in the cattle car transporting European Jews to their deaths, her visions of the fire and flames that awaited her and her young son, and Wiesel’s images of his first night in the camp have tripped up many young scholars. Some of them, primarily aspiring historians, would turn to Holocaust studies for answers but, as Roth laments, few philosophers heeded the call.

Historical inquiry alone, Roth maintains, does not do justice to the multifaceted nature of the Holocaust. What he feels is necessary is an interdisciplinary approach that includes philosophical inquiry, especially when the focus is on ethics. In addition to their study of churches as historical institutions, church historians should be particularly open to Roth’s view given their interest in the theological and ethical dimensions of church history.

Reflecting on ethics during and the after the Holocaust is nothing new for Roth. He has written, co-authored, and co-edited dozens of books, many of which address the Holocaust and the post-Holocaust world from an ethical perspective. Central to his scholarship is taking to heart Elie Wiesel’s assertion that “The Holocaust demands interrogation and calls everything into question.” Believing that the Holocaust could not have happened without the collapse and collaboration of ethical traditions, particularly Christian ethics, Roth writes, “It is precisely because of my Christian identity that I have immersed myself in the study of the Holocaust, for I believe that my identity (as indeed anyone’s identity as a Christian) is linked to that catastrophe” (46).

The Holocaust has revealed that ethical traditions are fragile and easily manipulated into serving evil. For this reason Roth addresses first what happened to ethics during the Holocaust and then considers how to make post-Holocaust ethics more credible and sustainable. Sensitive, balanced, and profound, the insights in this volume are that of a seasoned scholar, one who recognizes that he does not have all the answers but that he is contributing to an immensely important project – the restoration and reconstruction of ethics in the shadow of Birkenau.
Some mention should be made of Roth’s methodology. He is truly a historian’s philosopher in that he refrains from overly abstract discussions of ethics by concentrating on the experiences of real individuals. He proceeds from these experiences, often depicted in survivor memoirs, to their impact on ethics and finally to harnessing these memories “to reconsider and retrieve ethics, to recover and renew its vitality in the ruins of a post-Holocaust world” (xi). In addition to analyzing the ethical dimensions of accounts by survivors Roth also reflects on the work of a diverse group of scholars, writers, and filmmakers who have addressed similar issues including Primo Levi, Jean Amery, Sarah Kofman, Daniel Goldhagen, Claudia Koonz, Peter Haas, Mel Gibson, Pierre Sauvage, William Styron, and Raul Hilberg. Roth’s reflections are aimed at gathering insights into why moral standards and ethical traditions were so easily subverted during the Holocaust and how to ensure that in the future ethics is not only sturdier but that people, especially scholars, are prepared to identify and challenge those who would try to manipulate or undermine ethics. The Holocaust creates “a duty,” Roth insists, “to speak, an obligation to make ethics stronger and less subject to overriding, dysfunctionality, or subversion, an insistence not only to drive home the difference between right and wrong but also to influence action accordingly” (94).

Roth’s conviction that particular experiences, details, and facts contain moral insights and can serve as a new foundation for ethics is apparent throughout his book. In one example we are introduced to Sarah Kofman, a French philosopher, whose father, the rabbi Berek Kofman, was buried alive by the Nazis for trying to observe the Sabbath in one of the death camps. She struggles to speak and write about this unspeakable act but when she finally does she uses the experience as a source of ethical insight. In Smothered Words (1998) Kofman remarks that in Nazi Germany “community” — in the inclusive sense of humanity — was forbidden. The lack of an inclusive community of which her father could be a member left him and all Jews isolated, threatened, and ultimately easily disposed of. Kofman concludes that it is crucial in the post-Holocaust world to support “the community (of those) without community” and to build a new humanism that has at its core a commitment to defend human rights. Roth emphasizes the importance of listening to the experiences of victims such as Kofman because “knowledge roots itself in human experience” (184). It might also be added that it is the victims — more than the perpetrators or bystanders — who will refuse to return to the status quo before the Holocaust, to the old humanism, which failed so miserably.

It is therefore not surprising that Roth is critical of Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ because the film fails to question the traditional Christian depiction of this event in the wake of the Holocaust. “The problem is that Gibson’s film,” Roth states, “has much more in common with pre-Holocaust Christian animosity toward Jews than it does with post-Holocaust reconciliation between Christianity and Judaism” (49). Roth’s critique goes even further. He maintains that portrayals of the crucifixion in a post-Holocaust world must be linked to the Holocaust because if Jesus had not been crucified then the Holocaust would not have taken place. He reproaches Gibson for failing to acknowledge that “No crucifixion of Jesus = No Holocaust” (45).Whether a depiction of the crucifixion that did not blame Jews would be a sufficient link to the Holocaust for Roth is not clear. What is clear is that Roth believes that to produce a film or write a book after 1945 that addresses Christianity, particularly the crucifixion, as if nothing has changed since the Holocaust is not just unacceptable, it undermines the pursuit of a post-Holocaust ethics.

Considering Roth’s problems with the Gibson film and his demand for a radical rethinking of how Christians depict the Passion, one might expect cautious praise for Daniel Goldhagen’s A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair (2002). While recognizing the book’s historical inaccuracies, Roth writes approvingly that the author “may be helping to create a new Christianity” (106). Goldhagen’s demand that Catholic Church carry out fundamental reform (“conciliatory language, good will, apologies, even the most heart felt expressions of sorrow, regret, and contrition are not enough”) is not radically different from the vision of a reformed Christianity shared by Roth and many other Christian scholars (see review of Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation in previous Newsletter). Although Roth (and a growing number of Catholics) would agree with Goldhagen that real reform requires forthright recognition by Catholic leaders of the Church’s institutional antisemitism, he neither explicitly supports nor condemns Goldhagen’s call for the Church to abandon papal infallibility and dissolve the Vatican. Nevertheless, Goldhagen’s general message should be embraced, says Roth, and that doing so would advance the construction of a post-Holocaust Christian ethics.

Roth’s book is packed with insights he draws from the experiences of victims, from the research of other scholars, and from the interpretations put forth by artists and writers. His own skills as a philosopher are put to use in unique and innovative ways as he analyzes works from outside his field with admirable adroitness.

On a personal level, Roth acknowledges that the recent birth of a granddaughter has conferred on him a new sense of responsibility for the world in which she will live. His thoughts are worth quoting at length because they provides the best summary of his intentions in the book–intentions which he fulfills with grace, astuteness and wisdom.

“As Keeley’s grandfather, I want more than ever for her post-Holocaust world to be one in which human rights abuses, genocide among them, are minimized if not eliminated. I want more than ever – for her, for all the children and grandchildren – a world that embodies higher ethical standards and conduct than ours exhibits in the early twenty-first century. Having become a grandfather, my time to work for those goals grows shorter, and therefore the work seems increasingly urgent, more intensely required because it will remains so far from being done when my death comes. A book about ethics during and after the Holocaust is, at best, a modest contribution in response to that urgency. . . . I offer it as a present to her world, as well as to her, hoping that it may help to encourage justice, healing, and compassion” (xiii).

Matthew Hockenos, Skidmore College, Saratoga, N.Y., USA

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

Since many of our fraternity will this month be starting a new academic year, I thought it appropriate to begin with a fine review of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent overview on church history, written by our most distinguished colleague in Britain, Owen Chadwick.

Contents:

1) Conference Announcement: Bonhoeffer Symposium, Boston, Sept. 17-18th
2) Book reviews:

a) Rowan Wiliams, Archbishop of Canterbury, Why study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church.
b) Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Legacy
c) Howes, Japan’s modern prophet
d) ed. Bischof., Religion in Austria

3) Book notes: Higgins, Stalking the Holy

1) The Committee of Church Relations and the Holocaust of the United States Memorial Museum is co-organizing a two-day symposium on the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in association with Boston College, Hebrew College and Andover-Newton Seminary. The symposium, which will be held on September 17-18th in Boston will provide a forum for Jewish, Catholic and Protestant scholars to discuss Bonhoeffer’s work and legacy for post-Holocaust theology. (See also Item 2b below).

A listing of the speakers and further details are available at
http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/center/conferences/bonhoeffer.htm

2a) Rowan Williams, Why Study the Past? The Quest for the Historical Church.
Grand Rapids, Michigan: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2005. Pp. 129.
ISBN 0-8028-2990-2. (This review appeared first in The Catholic Historical Review, 92.2 (2006)
and is reprinted by permission of the author).

The frontispiece is a 1740 haywain passing the ruins of an ancient abbey, a pleasing way of asserting that the Church has a history. This is not precisely a book on why study the past, but on how the Church needs to think and rethink its own history, and what it might get out of that endeavour; and how problems in its historical perception might, indeed must, keep arising in new generations and new circumstances; and what alarming difficulties come and what noble opportunities. This is not a plea that universities ought to have professors of church history. Critics and professors, though necessary to understanding, cause trouble. They live in a welter of change, and excess of change does not suit a body of persons persuaded that they are given eternal truth. This book studies how churches cope, or should cope, with that trouble.

Christians know that they are the Church of the apostles. They would like – for a long time they liked – to feel an unchanging apostolic Church through the centuries. The historians prove that this axiom wobbles. Rowan Williams seeks to make sense of this through a very charitable outlook on the witness of heresies , divergent movements within the Catholic Church. He sees something good in the moralism of Pelagius, or in the effort of Arius to find words for the Incarnation, or in the overdone zeal of Celtic penitentiaries; that such suppressed or disadvantaged voices must be allowed to be themselves, they are at least as strange as any orthodox voices from the past. In these pages we do not hear the thunder of an Athanasius. A constructive engagement with forms of faith that are outside the supposed mainstream is one of the most important critical responses we can bring to a mature understanding of the Church. An attitude of mind that cannot engage in recognizing the past of the Church is likely to be closed off from what is different or challenging in the present.

Here is an unusual doctrine of development such that even Newman would have doubted. But it contains two excellent consequences. The first is a response to the charge that the Church is always a servant of the culture of the day. Here the Church and its teaching and its ideals and its way of life are creative in the culture of the day; it is contributing to the nature of modern society and civilization. (By moral force? And also by protest?) Here this contribution is held to be necessary to the intellectual and emotional well-being of modern culture.

And the second consequence is more moving. At the heart lies the conviction that the real unity of Christians lies in worship; the eucharist of course, but prayers, and a charmingly expressed emphasis on the ability to say psalms together in praise; with its historical dimension from King David to the mystics and poets of modernity; and gratitude as the touch of God, with its outcome in generosity and alms-giving. It began less with doctrines than with martyrs and reverence for martyrs among the Christian communities. Our awareness of words that are still held in common, acts still performed, helps us to read what they said within one context which we all share, the act of the Church as it opens itself to the action of the Christ who is present in his Body. One of the evident signs of Christian continuity is making our own the rhythms and vocabulary of another age. So, though we find here a mind that accepts that doctrine is necessary, that is not the key, nor even the basic feeling, when he writes of church unity.

Throughout is a repeated powerful sense of gift, grace. The Church’s integrity, orthodoxy or whatever, is a gift, not primarily an achievement. Yet we do not know what will be drawn out of us by the pressure of Christ’s reality, what the final shape of a future orthodoxy might be. This makes a strong affirmation of a God-guided development of the Church as it moves through the centuries. And that, from this prominent Protestant archbishop, includes the Pope’s part in the forming of creeds.

Owen Chadwick, Cambridge

2b) Stephen R.Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Legacy. Post-Holocaust Perspectives. Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2006. 224 Pp.
ISBN 0-80006-3815-8 (paper).

Stephen Haynes has devoted a considerable part of his academic career to studying the life and thought of the martyred German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His previous work, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon, was a masterly survey of how Bonhoeffer’s ideas have been received in different communities in different parts of the world during the sixty-one years since he was executed by the Nazis

In this new work, which appears appropriately in time to commemorate Bonhoeffer’s 100th anniversary, Haynes turns to the more narrowly focused but highly significant question of Bonhoeffer’s attitudes towards Judaism and the Jewish people. This topic, he admits, has only emerged in the last few decades. Previous discussions about Bonhoeffer’s importance concerned either his role in the anti-Nazi resistance movement, or his posthumous leadership in the theological debates about reconstituting the church in the post-war world. But given the fact that, over the past twenty years, the Christian churches as a whole have been increasingly involved in assessing their part in the tragedy of the Jewish people, commonly known as the Holocaust, so questions have been posed about Bonhoeffer’s stance on this issue.

Haynes’ new survey skillfully seeks to clarify and assess Bonhoeffer’s position from an objective point of view. To do so, he has first to clear the ground by looking at the popular memory about Bonhoeffer and the Jews, and also at the more scholarly interpretations written so far by both Jewish and Christian authors. Furthermore he has a chapter on the context of the German Church Struggle in which Bonhoeffer was working. And he concludes the book with a perceptive chapter on Bonhoeffer and Christian Rescue, which again places him in a wider context.

In popular memory, Bonhoeffer’s reputation has undergone an enormous change in the past sixty years. In 1945 he was regarded by many fellow Evangelical churchmen in Germany with dismay and disapproval because, as a theologian, he had not only condoned but actually participated in the plot to murder the head of state. In the eyes of the Bavarian Bishop of Munich, he was a political traitor who deserved his fate. The change was largely brought about by the indefatigable efforts of his close friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge. Bethge came to emphasize the fact that for Bonhoeffer and his family the sufferings of the Jews was a significant factor for joining the conspiracy, that after 1938 Bonhoeffer had adopted a novel stance about Judaism, and that his final writings were a promising foundation for Christian-Jewish rapprochement. Other witnesses believed that Bonhoeffer’s reactions to the persecution of the Jews was derived from his experience of American racism, and essentially was therefore a protest against the violation of human rights. But Haynes correctly stresses the theological basis for Bonhoeffer’s stance, which contrasted so markedly from the indifference of so many other German church members. For these reasons popular memory now regards Bonhoeffer as a martyr, as can be seen by his inclusion amongst those whose statues now adorn the front entrance of Westminster Abbey in London.

On the scholarly level, Jewish writers have assessed Bonhoeffer with both appreciation and caution. Overall the response is that he towered over most Christians in Nazi Germany, but also that he disappoints, at least in his early writings, by evincing typically Christian approaches to Judaism. From a Christian perspective, Bethge set the tone. He admits that Bonhoeffer’s early writings were open to criticism, but claimed that Bonhoeffer moved on to a much deeper solidarity with persecuted Israel, not just a sympathy for the converted Jews. Furthermore, after the Crystal Night pogrom of November 1938, Bethge claims, Bonhoefffer not only repudiated all anti-Judaism, but in his radical thinking thereafter was moving to fresh ground, based on his daily reading of the Jewish scriptures/Old Testament.

Yet it is notable that, in his epic biography written in the 1950s and early 1960s, Bethge said very little about Bonhoeffer’s attitude towards the Jews or Judaism. This might be explained by the then widespread disregard for the Holocaust’s victims, by a lack or oversight on Bethge’s part, or it might be that the Jewish issue did not play as large a part in Bonhoeffer’s thinking, as Bethge and others, after 1980, have asserted to be the case. Haynes is non-committal on this point.

All commentators agree that Bonhoeffer’s essay The Church and the Jewish Question, written in March-April 1933, is his most significant contribution in the beginning period of the Church Struggle. But Haynes could possibly have made more of the exceptional nature of this forceful declaration, as also of the particularities of the audience for whom it was intended. The piece was prompted by the new Nazi regime’s first violent and repressive anti-Jewish measures, such as the notorious anti-Jewish boycott of April 1st 1933, the accompanying thuggery of Nazi units against Jewish individuals and institutions, and the newly-minted Law for the Reconstitution of the Civil Service, which banned Jews from holding posts in public agencies, and was to lead to the dismissal of many of Bonhoeffer’s acquaintances. It was clear that Bonhoeffer wrote in haste, and presumably in indignation. His purpose was to convince the Evangelical Church’s leading authorities that they should take action against such racially-motivated lawlessness.

On the one hand, this essay contains the well-known recommendations on how the Church could and should oppose the state’s oppressive behavior and support the victims. On the other hand, it also contains passages which were cause later contention, such as: The church of Christ has never lost sight of the thought that the chosen people , who nailed the redeemer of this world to the cross, must bear the curse for its action through a long history of suffering. . . . But the history of the suffering of this people, loved and punished by God, stands under the sign of the final homecoming of the people of Israel to its God. And this homecoming happens in the conversion of Israel to Christ .

Such views, Haynes points out, replicate the traditional Christian attitude towards Judaism, which was first adumbrated by St. Augustine, and repeated by Luther. In an earlier work, Reluctant Witnesses. Jews and the Christian Imagination (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press 1995), Haynes coined the phrase the witness-people myth as a handy term for labeling the sort of beliefs informing the Christian mind across many centuries. Bonhoeffer’s use of this witness-people myth in this April 1933 essay therefore breaks no new ground, and can be said to repristinate existing pejorative convictions.

On the other hand, can we be so sure that such views represented Bonhoeffer’s genuine beliefs at the time? Haynes does not explore another possibility – namely that these sentiments were tactical in their purpose. After all, Bonhoeffer wanted to gain immediate action by the conservative church authorities on behalf of a discriminated group. He was not attempting to start a theological debate. It is possible to suggest that Bonhoffer may have sought to strengthen the forcefulness of his advocacy by not challenging the traditional attitudes on this touchy subject, as held by those he wanted to persuade.

But the blank refusal of his proposals for action by the church authorities was discouraging and dismaying. Even an attenuated draft – the Bethel Confession of June 1933 – was turned down to Bonhoeffer’s disgust. It was clear that the leading churchmen shared much of the widespread euphoria about the new Nazi regime, believed that Hitler was a God-sent leader in Germany’s hour of need, and that his campaigns against communists and Jews were worthy of divine approval. In such a climate, the chances of arousing the church to an awareness of Nazism’s evil character were nil. Shortly afterwards Bonhoeffer left for London.

Haynes suggests that, at the time and indeed thereafter, Bonhoeffer accepted the witness-people myth , and even that, by using the term the Jewish Question , Bonhoeffer approached too closely the collaborationist line of the pro-Nazi factions in the church’s ranks. He has searched carefully through all of Bonhoeffer’s subsequent writings but finds little more than a few hints of any change. Indeed, he believes, the Christo-centric emphasis in both Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison would suggest otherwise. Bonhoeffer never wrote any extended treatise on this subject after 1933. His supporters argue that this silence can be explained due to his becoming a marked man, who was himself subject to the Gestapo’s restrictions on his preaching and writing, and later on, of course, his arrest and imprisonment made any such publication impossible. They equally speculate that, had he lived, he would surely have adopted the same path as his closest associate, Bethge, and eventually championed a very different stance on Christian-Jewish relations. We shall never know.

Haynes is therefore skeptical about any claims that Bonhoeffer can be seen as a precursor for post-Holocaust Christian theology. The continuities in Bonhoeffer’s thought suggest that he remained tied to the witness-people myth . On the other hand, Haynes takes a much more positive view about Bonhoeffer’s rescue efforts. He disagrees with the decision of the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Centre, Yad Vashem, in denying Bonhoeffer the title of Righteous Gentile . The reasons given are clearly inadequate. Instead Haynes stresses the fact that Bonhoeffer’s efforts to rescue Jews were part of his theologically-prompted ethics. This was not just a case of general humanitarianism. Rather, for Bonhoeffer, the Jew is always the other who is Christ’s brother, whose suffering reflects God’s providence and whose treatment reveals the moral condition of church and society.

In the circumstances of Nazi Germany, he, like the rural Huguenots of Le-Chambon in France, or the Dutch Christian Reformers of Haarlem, Holland, recognized the Jews as the people of God who needed assistance. Bonhoeffer’s moral courage should not be seen as the product of a lone ranger mentality, but rather arose out of a deep sense of solidarity on philosemitic grounds. For him, Israel’s unique importance for Christians was a constant factor.

Haynes’ conclusion is very sound. Bonhoeffer’s involvement in resistance and rescue activities was undoubtedly nurtured by his belief that the Church was called to assist the weakest and most defenseless brothers and sister of Jesus Christ, who were indeed the apple of God’s eye . Yet all this grew out of a theological tradition of the ambivalent witness-people myth which legitimized Jewish suffering and regarded them as reprobate for not recognizing Jesus as their Messiah. So far, Haynes fears, this myth still claims support in Christian circles, largely because no one yet has constructed an alternate Christian theology of Israel adequate to the task. It could only be formulated by engaging Jews and Judaism on their own terms – an encounter which Bonhoeffer never undertook. His life and thought may have been both exemplary and inspiring, but it would be exaggerating and misleading to claim that he was a prophet of an entirely new era in Christian-Jewish relationships. JSC

2c) John Howes, Japan’s Modern Prophet. Uchimura Kanzo, 1861-1930. Vancouver & Toronto: UBC Press, 2005. xvi + 445 Pp.ISBN 0-7748-1145-5

This work represents the fruits of a lifelong study of its subject which began with a Master’s thesis in 1951 and culminated in 2005, by which time the author was a Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia. A number of studies in English of Uchimura and the Non-church Christianity which he founded have preceded this volume, but there has been nothing of the scope and detail of this work. It includes a biography of Uchimura, a critical study of his thought and that of his disciples (called by their Japanese name, deshi), and finally, some suggestions of the influence the movement has had, within and outside Japan.

The author groups his narrative around what he sees to have been three key stages in Uchimura’s life: 1) His refusal, as a Christian, to bow at the reading of the Emperor’s Rescript on Education (1891); 2) His opposition to the Russo-Japanese War and conversion to pacifism (1903); and 3) His emergence (in response to the carnage of World War I) into public life as a preacher of Christ’s second coming (1918). A detailed account of the young Kanzo (as the author calls him at this stage) and his conversion to Christianity precedes the first stage. Here three personality traits emerge: a desire for affection, an oppressive sense of responsibility, and a need to dominate his surroundings. [19] Indeed, the young Kanzo emerges as a rather unattractive character and it is only after his conversion during his university days that these traits begin to be acted out as a desire for a Christianity independent of foreign missionary control. That this attitude was not motivated by an uncritical nationalism was demonstrated by the famous les majeste incident, when Uchimura rather tentatively refused to make the deep obeisance required at a ceremonial reading of an Imperial rescript. That his desire for independence from missionaries was not simple anti-foreignism can be shown by his lifelong friendship with certain foreigners, such as his early American mentors Seelye and Kerlin (during his 4-year stay in the U.S.) and his German deshi, Wilhelm Gundert. Throughout his career Uchimura used his facility in English to attempt to explain Japan and his theological position to non-Japanese Christians.

The second stage in Uchimura’s career began in 1900 with the launch of his journal, Seisho no Kenkyo [Studying the Bible]. The magazine began as an organ for the introduction of Uchimura’s expositions of biblical passages, together with translations of works by Western authors. As time went on, however, readers began to gather at his home, where Uchimura lectured on selected passages. Gradually, these meetings took on the form of non-liturgical services, with hymns and prayers added to the lectures. This marked the beginning of what came to be called Mukyokai, or Christianity without church. These gatherings were very Japanese, being similar in nature to the relation of a Confucian teacher to his student/disciples. As Howes shows in later chapters, the type of exposition employed by Uchimura was based on what we would call today an existential approach. It was closely related to the problems he had faced in the crisis of his own conversion and it responded to the personal questions raised by his hearers in their struggles with the emergence of a new society in Japan. Accordingly, these meetings attracted some of the most outstanding individuals of their day, men who would go on to be leaders in education and political life. The influence of this type of exposition came to reach far beyond the immediate circle of Uchimura’s disciples, as this reviewer can attest from seeing the commentaries in his Japanese Anglican colleagues’ libraries.

As a writer, Uchimura gained a national readership in 1897 with a column in a newly founded newspaper dedicated to progressive causes, Yorozu Choho. But together with three other columnists, he decided in 1903 to resign in opposition to the paper’s policy of support for war with Russia. This act made him a pacifist, though in contrast to his three socialist colleagues, Uchimura found the source of social injustice in the character of individuals [384] rather than in the structure of society. This was what led him to found his own journal, then, following World War I, to his decision to join the movement announcing the imminent second coming of Christ. The need (in his view) for rapid conversion in turn led him to move from his small Bible-study groups to large public meetings where he lectured on the Bible to gatherings of as many as 700 listeners. So by the time of his death in 1930 he had become a public figure, known throughout Japan, but also abroad. Appealing primarily to intellectuals, it attracted some of the leading figures in Japanese public life, including university presidents and a supreme court justice. But it spread throughout the country, forming a wide stratum of “hidden Christians” in the population.

Interestingly, it was in Europe rather than in America that his writings aroused the greatest interest abroad. His autobiographical essay, How I Became a Christian was translated into German by Wilhelm Gundert in 1904 while a theological student. Translations into the Scandinavian languages and French followed. Gundert, accomplished in eight languages, was so impressed that he moved to Japan with his wife and placed himself under Uchimura’s direction. He remained in Japan until 1936, working as an independent missionary and teacher, but always in close contact with Uchimura and his group. This reviewer remembers how Emil Brunner, when visiting Japan in the 1960’s, showed a special interest in Mukyokai, about which he had already heard through Gundert’s work.

What did Uchimura mean by Mukyokai? Howes points out that his interpretation changed throughout his life. This reviewer remembers a colleague, Professor Nakazawa, himself Mukyokai, explaining that the Japanese negative, Mu, usually translated Non- does not have the negative connotation that the English does, but is closer to something like absence of. Howes, at the end of his book, gives Uchimura’s final interpretation, announced posthumously as the sincere attempt of a believer to lead a Christian life based on the Bible without reference to organizations or liturgies. [386] Although the attempt to define has continued, this seems to be as good a one as any.

Any criticism of a book like this would appear like nit-picking. The detailed treatment of the subject challenges the reader. There is a good deal of repetition, but it is necessitated by the context. Perhaps it could have been more critical of Uchimura himself and his movement? The present reviewer, who has had a good deal of contact with Mukyokai and its members, still found it interesting, informative and instructive.

Cyril Powles, Vancouver

2d) Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka, Hermann Denz, eds. Religion in Austria. Contemporary Austrian Studies. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005. 297 pp. Charts, notes. $40.00 (paper), ISBN 0-7658-0823-4.

(This book was first reviewed for H-German in May 2006, and is reproduced by kind permission of the author.)
Secularization theory argued that a decline in religious belief would follow modernization. Religion in Austria brings together topical essays, a roundtable discussion, fora from the 2003 German Studies Association, review essays and book reviews which all tend to dispute the secularization theory. These materials address not only historically predominant Roman Catholicism, but the position of Judaism and Islam in Austrian society throughout various historical time periods as well. Part 1 of the volume, “Topical Essays,” contains a particularly useful set of articles. John W. Boyer’s essay addresses the role of political Catholicism in Austrian state-building, taking the long view over the tumultuous 1880s-1960s. Taking an even longer view, Paul M. Zulehner begins his essay with the dramatic Counter-Reformation decree of 1527, the “Law to Stamp Out and Punish Heresy” (p. 37). Zulehner argues that Austria became, once again, a re-Catholicized country, replete with Catholic culture. He asserts that with the modernization of the Austrian nation, however, the social position of the Church began to change gradually, bringing about a withdrawal from political life until a survey taken in 2000 revealed that 80 percent of Austrians believed that “church leaders should not try to influence the government in its decision-making” (p. 39). Zulehner uses statistical data and surveys to reveal the modern Austrian as someone who generally believes in some higher presence, and he links this belief to behavior at elections, gender, morality, and lifestyle choices. He demonstrates that despite the withdrawal of the Church from State relations, secularization has had only a limited impact and that religion still plays a role in both private and public life choices.

Building on this theme, Sieglinde K. Rosenberger’s essay addresses the significant role religion still plays in both creating tensions in society as well as providing religiously inspired policies. Using statistical data, Rosenberger examines various political parties in modern-day Austria and their position (if any) on religion. Rosenberger identifies an upsurge in the use of religious rhetoric and warns of an increased tension based on differences in culture and religious identity as the European Union ponders admission for predominantly non-Christian countries such as Turkey. Susanne Heine’s essay addresses just this issue when she examines the real tensions between Christians and Muslims in Austria. She traces the presence of Muslims in Austria up to the present day, examines the self-understanding of Muslims, and looks at integration policies. Particularly useful is her analysis of Austrian textbooks that tend to perpetuate myths and stereotypes about Muslims. In her estimation, if nothing changes with regards to images of Islam, problems will continue to mount as the opportunity for common understanding between Christianity and Islam becomes inexorably smaller.

Offering hopefulness regarding understanding and civility, Regina Polak’s interview with Bishop Helmut Krytzl comes to a close with the following observation: “[W]e must look at this pluralistic society not as a threat, but as a challenge, and then form a consciousness that views what the Church has to offer as a service to society–not in a servile way, but for our living together as something necessary in part for the survival of society” (p. 98).

Part 2 of the volume is a roundtable discussion featuring the remarks of Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Michael Bünker, Anas Schakfeh, and Rabbi Paul Chaim Eisenberg. Each essay addresses the position of the specific religious group in Austria–Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. A common theme running through each essay is the need for understanding and what Bünker refers to as a “self-taming” of religious groups in order to promote the existence of a peaceful society (p. 148). Cardinal Schönborn quotes Viktor Frankl’s insight: “Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of and since Hiroshima we know what is at stake” (p. 136). Rabbi Eisenberg adds to this mood with his statement that Austria, in order to be more accepting of its culturally diverse groups, must also move forward in its acceptance of its past.

Forum I and Forum II work to address just that past to which Rabbi Eisenberg was speaking. In Forum I, the position of Austrian officials both in the past and in the present is examined regarding art theft and looting during World War II. As Austria served as a model for the “Aryanization” of Jewish property, it still serves as an example of art restitution. Each essay (originally presented at the German Studies Association) analyzes Nazi policies, Austrian complicity with many of these policies, and the current debates about restitution. Jonathan Petropoulos argues that Austria is coming closer to dealing with its past in that it has pressured local, state, and private institutions to make amends for the theft of Jewish-owned art (p. 213). He also mentions that, although progress has been made, much work remains to be done.

Forum II also seeks to address the issue of acceptance of Austria’s past. This fascinating series of essays examines the difference between family memories of National Socialism and the national construction of memory (p. 215). Margit Reiter’s essay looks at the “victim myth” (i.e., that Austrians were Hitler’s “first victims”) and its relationship to second-generation Austrians. Reiter has found that children of former Nazi parents are entangled in a conflict between emotional connections with their parents, the desire to defend their parents’ reputations, and ambivalent feelings about the “real” facts of the Austrian Nazi past. Helga Embacher’s work on philosemitism in the second generation echoes Reiter’s research by showing how silences about family members’ potentially guilty pasts can lead some individuals to a crisis in their own identity. Daniela Ellmauer’s work goes beyond the second generation to the grandchildren of the World-War-II family members. Her work in the reconstruction of family memory and its functions in the family has revealed that third generation children tend to be more willing to accept their grandparents’ guilt because most of them tend to see their grandparents’ actions as “necessary to their survival” (p. 245). Like Reiter, Ellmauer argues that many grandchildren feel a fierce need to protect “Grandpa” when atrocity stories are circulating. Ellmauer ends with a call to historians to fill in the absences regarding the role of perpetrators so “Grandpa’s” actions can be seen within a larger context. The final portion of the volume contains review essays, book reviews, and the annual review of Austrian political elections.This is an extremely useful volume, particularly for anyone interested in secularization theory, church-state interaction, or the role that religion can still play in informing modern citizens’ choices and attitudes towards state policy.

Beth Griech-Polelle, Bowling Green State University

3) Book notes. Michael W.Higgins, Stalking the Holy. The pursuit of saint making. Toronto: Anansi Press 2006. 275 Pp. ISBN 0-88784-181-3

Michael Higgins, who teaches at St Jerome’s University, an affiliate of the University of Waterloo, Ontario has written an entertaining study of the process of canonization in the Roman Catholic Church. This will be of value to non-Catholics who are often mystified by the complications of the procedures. Higgins opens with two chapters on how saints are selected and evaluated, and then gives three case studies which illustrate the difficulties and pitfalls – mainly political – which can cause lengthy delays, even denials. As examples he illustrates the cases of Padre Pio, a very popular faith healer in southern Italy, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, and finally most controversial of all, Pope Pius XII, whom he describes as God’s embroiled deputy. Higgins’ excellent elucidation of the many twists and turns in what might seem to be a simple matter of recognizing saintliness gives us pause to think and to see that in a multi-national and highly organized ecclesiastical structure like the Vatican all sorts of pressures can be expected. So the procedures have to be well thought out. Saints are icons or windows on to God’s love. Higgins shows us how they are recognized in this calling. JSC.

With best wishes to you all,
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

This issue has been prepared by Matthew Hockenos of Skidmore Coillege, New York State, to whom I am most grateful for his assistance. It is concerned with the recent reconsideration of Christian-Jewish relations, and therefore starts with short extracts from Pope Benedict’s address in Auschwitz at the end of May. You may want to note his debatable interpretation of German history in paragraph 2 below.

For those of you who have been enjoying the summer heatwaves both in Europe and North America, I send you my warm regards from a record-breaking Vancouver where we have been enjoying temperatures above 90 Fahr, or 32 Celsius.

Contents:

1. Extracts from the address given by Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, 28 May 2006
2. Book reviews:

a) Laqueur, The Changing Faces of Antisemitism
b) M.Boys ed., Seeing Judaism Anew

1. Address by Pope Benedict XVI at Auschwitz Camp.during his pastoral visit in Poland.

To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible – and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany. In a place like this, words fail; in the end there can only be a dread silence – a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? In silence, then, we bow our heads before the endless line of those who suffered and were put to death here; yet our silence becomes in turn a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again.

Pope John Paul II came here as a son of the Polish people. I come here today as a son of the German people. For this very reason, I can and must echo his words: I could not fail to come here. I had to come. It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as a son of that people over whom a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power.

How many questions arise in this place! Constantly the question comes up: Where was God in those days? Why was he silent? How could he permit this endless slaughter, this triumph of evil? The words of Psalm 44 come to mind, Israel’s lament for its woes. This cry of anguish, which Israel raised to God in its suffering, at moments of deep distress, is also a cry for help raised by all those who in every age suffer for the love of God, for the love of truth and goodness. How many they are even in our own day!

The place where we are standing is a place of memory, it is the place of the Shoah. The past is never simply the past. It has always something to say to us: it tells us the path to take and the paths not to take. The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm: “We are being killed, accounted a sheep for the slaughter” were fulfilled in a terrifying way. Deep down these vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. These men thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. But the Jewish people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity. That God finally had to die. Power had to belong to man alone. By destroying Israel, by the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the tap root of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful.

Like John Paul II, I have walked alongside the inscriptions in Europe’s many languages which speak to us of the sufferings of men and women from the whole continent. They would stir our hearts profoundly if we remembered the victims not merely in general, but saw the faces of the individual persons who ended up here in this abyss of terror. I felt a deep urge to pause in a particular way before the inscription in German. It evokes the face of Edith Stein, Theresia Benedicta a Cruce: a woman, Jewish and German, who disappeared along with her sister into the black night of the Nazi concentration camp; as a Christian and a Jew, she accepted death with her people and for them. The Germans who had been brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau and met their death here were considered as Abschaum der Nation – the refuse of the nation. Today we grateful and hail them as witnesses to the truth and goodness which even among our people were not eclipsed.

By God’s grace, together with the purification of memory demanded by this place of horror, a number of initiatives have sprung up with the aim of imposing a limit upon evil and confirming goodness. So there is hope that this place of horror will gradually become a place for constructive thinking and that remembrance will foster resistance to evil and the triumph of love.

2a) Walter Laqueur, The Changing Faces of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 228 Pp. ISBN 0-195-50429-2

When I mentioned to a friend that I was reviewing a book on antisemitism subtitled From Ancient Times to the Present Day, the response was that it must be either a very long book or a book with lengthy gaps. It should come as no surprise to those familiar with Walter Laqueur’s scholarship over the past few decades that neither is the case. Although this slim volume is by no means an exhaustive study of antisemitism over more than two millennia, Laqueur sums up succinctly the changing characteristics of antisemitism throughout different historical eras and brings a wealth of knowledge as well as fresh insights to an intensely scrutinized topic. His primary aim is neither to attack the validity of another scholar’s thesis nor to put forth a pioneering argument of his own. What he does do masterfully in barely 200 pages is to write an extended essay that takes stock of the leading interpretations, sums up the history, and weighs in on the current debates.

As the title, The Changing Face of Antisemitism, suggests, Laqueur stresses that while there are certain common features of antisemitism across time and space, the motivation, character, and manifestation of antisemitism differ when viewed in a historical context. A few general observations on the history of antisemitism will make this clear. Antisemitism in medieval and early modern Europe was motivated (for the most part) by Christian anti-Judaic theology and church dogma, in particular replacement theory or supersessionism. Whereas from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Second World War racial stereotyping of Jews accounted for the hostility toward Jews in Europe, especially in Germany and Austria (although not in Russia). In the post-Holocaust era yet another strand of antisemitism developed among neo-Nazi groups in Europe and America, coined the “new antisemitism” by scholars. In the twenty-first century, however, the term new antisemitism refers not only to antisemites on the far right but also to segments of the Euro-American Left, on the one hand, and radical Islamists, on the other. Both groups display various degrees of contempt for the state of Israel and often its Jewish supporters outside Israel. While leftist practitioners of this variety of antisemitism maintain that they are not antisemites but merely critics of Israel’s Middle East policy, Laqueur is skeptical. Their systematic vilification of Israel and their stereotyping of Jews as pro-Israeli imperialists and Wall Street types is, as far as Laqueur is concerned, antisemitism through and through.

Throughout the book, the emphasis is on depicting and explaining these various manifestations of antisemitism while not losing sight of what antisemites throughout the ages and across the globe have had in common. Two factors are fundamental to explaining antisemitism throughout the centuries: first, the largely negative interpretation of Jews in Christian and Islamic texts and, second, the Jews‚ minority status wherever they have lived. The simple fact that for most of the past 2000 years Jews have been stateless and living as a minority among Christians or Muslims has made them easy targets.

Laqueur speculates in his introductory and concluding chapters that in the twenty first century we may see a decline in antisemitism in Europe as new minorities, in particular Muslims, take over the regrettable status as the “most bothersome minorities.” There are, for example, ten times as many Arabs as Jews in France today. It is clear from the 2005 riots in Paris by disaffected North African Muslims, the heated controversy in Holland over its Muslim minority in the wake of the murder of Theo van Gogh, and Russia’s war against Chechnya’s Muslim separatists that the “Jewish problem” in Europe has receded from center stage. As the Muslim populations in Europe grow Islamophobia is replacing Judeophobia.

With half the Jews in the world now living in Israel, what are the prospects for a decline of antisemitism in the Middle East? It depends. If Israel pursues a policy of accommodation to Palestine then we might see a change for the better. “Once the Palestinians have a viable state,” Laqueur contends, “and once Israel has taken other steps to accommodate Muslim interests ˆ such as the internationalization of the holy places of Jerusalem – there is a reasonable chance that Arab antisemitism will decrease even though it will not disappear” (20). However, should the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continue in its present state or spiral out of control (as it appears to be doing in July 2006) then, Laqueur believes, radical Islam will continue to be the central force attacking Jews in this century.

In addition to the minority status of Jews wherever they settled, the other fundamental factor undergirding antisemitism throughout the centuries has been Christian and Islamic doctrine on Jews and Judaism. The advent of Christianity and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ are of crucial importance in the history of antisemitism. What must be acknowledged is the central role Jews play in Christian theology as Christ killers and God’s disobedient children, whom he rejects and punishes. Christian hostility toward Jews was warranted, so the argument went, as punishment for Jewish sins and their perfidy. If God rejected and accursed the people he had originally selected as the chosen people, then didn‚t it follow that Christians–the new chosen people˜should act accordingly. Nevertheless, although Christian antisemitism led to violence and at times murder, Christian theology regarded the survival of Jews as necessary for proof of the righteousness of Christianity.

The Koran also provides material which Muslims could use to rationalize the mistreatment, and even the killing, of Jews. It is important to note however, that the treatment of Jews varied across the vast Muslim empires, which stretched across north Africa and south and central Asia. There were pogroms and forcible conversions but there were also periods of tolerance when Jewish culture flourished. Although Muslims treated Jews as second-class citizens, they fared better under Islam than under Christianity in medieval and early modern Europe. Unlike Christians who accused Jews of killing their Savior, Muslims berated Jews because they had rejected Muhammad; they viewed Jews as miserable and weak–but not a force to fear. This would change dramatically after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 when Jews became aggressors and warmongers in the eyes of Arabs. Significantly, neither Christianity nor Islam justified their hostility toward Jews on a racial theory of Jewish inferiority.

There was an undeniable shift in late-nineteenth-century Europe from a religiously inspired antisemitism to one inspired and justified by pseudo-scientific racial theories. There has been a great deal of argument over whether Christian antisemitism, sometimes referred to as anti-Judaism, is entirely distinct from the racial antisemitism that emerged in the 1880s and peaked in Nazi Germany with the Holocaust. In his chapter titles Laqueur distinguishes between medieval anti-Judaism and modern racialism suggesting a distinction between the religious antisemitism of the medieval and early modern periods and the racial antisemitism in modern times. And yet he is rightfully wary of exaggerating the break between premodern and modern antisemitism since there are examples of racial antisemitism in premodern Spain but none in modern Poland and Russia, where antisemitism was rife in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, even the most rabid of racial antisemites gladly drew on Christian antisemitic tropes as the Deutsche Christen did in the 1930s.

The development of race doctrine along with social Darwinism and eugenics in the second half of the nineteenth century provided antisemites with a “scientific” explanation for the Jews‚ alleged degenerate character. Racial antisemites, including Wilhelm Marr, who coined the term antisemitism in the late 1870s, maintained that even conversion to Christianity could not solve the Jewish problem. It was, so Marr and his devotees believed, the Jews‚ innate racial heritage that caused their depravity, not their religion. The alleged immutability of the Jews‚ defective character propelled the Nazis to the most radical of solutions to the Jewish problem: the forced expulsions, deportations, and eventual near extermination of European Jews˜including converted Christians–from 1939 to 1945.

Antisemitism did not disappear after the war. However, the weakness of the neo-fascist movements, the tiny number of Jews left in Europe, and the arrival of new immigrants from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa all mitigated against a powerful resurgence of antisemitism in postwar Europe. Laqueur maintains that, “uncontrolled immigration rather than the Jewish presence provided the basis for neofascism beginning in the 1970s” (126). Although Laqueur makes no reference to it, the public repudiation of antisemitism by Catholic and Protestant churches from the 1960s onward is another factor in the relative decline of antisemitism in Western and Central Europe. At the same time it should be mentioned that where antisemitism does exist in postwar Europe some must be attributed to right-wing church circles and to Christians who continue to maintain that Jews killed their Savior. This is also true in postwar America.

Communists in Eastern Europe and Russia did not treat Jews much better than the far right in Western Europe. Polish pogroms in the immediate postwar years, Stalin’s 1953 doctors‚ plot, and the show trials in Eastern Europe all targeted Jews. Jews became the scapegoats for economic woes in communist countries. With the fall of communism, neo-fascists groups emerged but antisemitism was not their raison d’être.

Yet, in certain regions of the Middle East, antisemitism is central to the political and religious platforms of ruling governments, leading parties, and powerful religious movements. This is primarily, although not exclusively, expressed through attacks on Israel. However, anti-Israeli sentiments are often paired with denials of the Holocaust and passion for conspiracy theories involving “world Jewry,” such as in the hoax-text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Jew as capitalist, imperialist, and pro-American has replaced early stereotypes of the Jew as weak and cowardly. “The miserable and despised Jew turned into a superhuman, demonic, almost omnipotent figure ˆ a danger to the whole world” (197). Laqueur points to the Islamization of antisemitism as a particularly dangerous phenomenon because it is not only more vicious in its accusations against the Jews but also broadens the appeal of antisemitism and conspiracy theories to Muslims outside the Arab world. Radical Muslim clerics are now fanning the flames of antisemitism as many Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churchmen had done earlier.

It took Christians nearly two millennia and ultimately the Holocaust to recognize that preaching contempt for Jews may have brought about short-term sporadic gains but in the long term weakened the church, obfuscated its central message of “love thy neighbor,” and contributed to the murder of six million Jews. The repudiation of antisemitism and anti-Judaism by Christian churches in the second half of the twentieth century has brought about a sea change in the relationship between church and synagogue. Although there is still much progress to be made in the post-Holocaust dialogue between Christians and Jews, the relationship between the two is the strongest it has ever been. One can only hope that something similar can take place between Muslims and Jews in the coming decades.

Matthew Hockenos

2b) Mary C. Boys (ed.), Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefiled, 2005 285 pages, ISBN: 0742548821

The Christian Scholars Group on Christian-Jewish Relations issued a brief but extremely significant statement in September 2002 titled “A Sacred Obligation: Rethinking Christian Faith in Relation to Judaism and the Jewish People.” – See below – This document marks an important step forward in the long-term process of coming to terms with the churches‚ centuries-old antisemitic teachings. Established in 1969 and consisting of approximately two dozen Catholic and Protestant scholars from various disciplines including biblical studies, history, ethics, and theology, the Christian Scholars Group (CSG) has worked passionately and effectively to build bridges between Christians and Jews in the wake of the Holocaust and to expose the nearly 2000 years of Christian misrepresentation and disparagement of Jews and Judaism. According to Alice Eckardt, who joined the group in the early 1970s and whose husband, A. Roy Eckardt, was one of the founders, members “seek to use their scholarship to reclaim or reconceive elements of Christian theology and practice that offer a more adequate representation of its relationship to Judaism and the Jewish people.” Over three decades these scholars produced dozens of pioneering books, essays, and discussion papers on a wide range of topics as well as occasional joint statements. The 2002 statement “A Sacred Obligation”˜a ten-point summary of the convictions held by the group – was issued with the intended purpose of encouraging everyday Christians to reflect on their faith in relation to Judaism and Jews.

Seeing Judaism Anew: Christianity’s Sacred Obligation (2005) is a collection of twenty-two essays by CSG members, who expand on and elucidate the convictions in “A Sacred Obligation.” These lucid and well-written essays serve as an excellent introduction to the exciting and innovative research (undertaken by the CSG as well as European and U.S. church groups), which has led to revolutionary changes in Christian thinking about Jews and Judaism. The most receptive readership for Seeing Judaism Anew will be a general audience of Christians who want to explore Christian-Jewish relations in a post-Holocaust world. College teachers will also see this book as an excellent text for undergraduate courses on antisemitism, Christian-Jewish relations, and post-Holocaust Christian theology.

The editor of this collection, Mary C. Boys, chair in practical theology at Union Theological Seminary, has done a superb job introducing and organizing the text. The book is divided into twelve parts, the first of which consists of a background chapter by Eva Fleischner, who traces the influence of nineteen centuries of Christian antisemitism on both the emergence of racial antisemitism and Christian complicity in the Shoah. “Without doubt,” she writes, “the teaching of contempt [for Jews and Judaism] fertilized the soil in which Hitler’s genocidal antisemitism flourished” (7). In the last section of the book Alice Eckardt describes how the Christian Scholars Group emerged in the late 1960s amidst a growing awareness among some U.S. Christians of the need for scholarly reassessment of the Christian understanding of Jewish history and theology in the wake of the Holocaust. “We understood our work,” she writes, “to involve the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the inheritance of biblical faith we shared with Jews, and making known the richness of postbiblical Judaism to fellow Christians” (268). The essays sandwiched between the first and last chapters expound on the contents of “A Sacred Obligation” and provide a glimpse into the scholars‚ original research.

At the heart of the original statement and at the core of the more recent essays is the conviction that Christians are obligated as Christians to expose the erroneous claims the churches have made about Jews, in particular that they are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus and accursed by God; to repudiate the teaching of contempt; and to accept and understand God’s covenantal relationship with the Jews not only as valid for all time but also as essential for Christianity. John Merkle emphasizes this last point when he says, “While purging our liturgies of anti-Judaism must be done to help reduce Jewish suffering caused by antisemitism, it must also be done for the spiritual health of Christians and for the integrity and credibility of Christianity” (184).

As a church historian who focuses on the German Protestant churches after 1945 and their halting progress toward the recognition and understanding of Christian complicity in the Holocaust, I applaud the clarity, the forthrightness about past errors, and the radical rethinking of Christianity’s relation to Judaism expressed by the CSG authors. The question arises, nevertheless: What impact is this rethinking of Christianity and Judaism having on non-scholarly gentiles in the twenty-first century? As David Berger, a specialist in Jewish history and Jewish-Christian relations, noted when the rethinking process was in its early stages, “all the ringing denunciations of antisemitism and progressive reassessments of Judaism have little importance if they are confined to an activist elite and have no resonance among ordinary Christians” (184). With the publication of Seeing Judaism Anew, ordinary Christians now have access to esoteric theological arguments presented in straightforward and easily comprehensible prose. Perhaps the time has come when the important work done by these scholars will resonate beyond the activist elite.

A Sacred Obligation: Rethinking Christian Faith in Relation to Judaism and the Jewish People

1. God’s covenant with the Jewish people endures forever.

For centuries Christians claimed that their covenant with God replaced or superseded the Jewish covenant. We renounce this claim. We believe that God does not revoke divine promises. We affirm that God is in covenant with both Jews and Christians. Tragically, the entrenched theology of supersessionism continues to influence Christian faith, worship, and practice, even though it has been repudiated by many Christian denominations and many Christians no longer accept it. Our recognition of the abiding validity of Judaism has implications for all aspects of Christian life.

2. Jesus of Nazareth lived and died as a faithful Jew.

Christians worship the God of Israel in and through Jesus Christ. Supersessionism, however, prompted Christians over the centuries to speak of Jesus as an opponent of Judaism. This is historically incorrect. Jewish worship, ethics, and practice shaped Jesus’s life and teachings. The scriptures of his people inspired and nurtured him. Christian preaching and teaching today must describe Jesus’s earthly life as engaged in the ongoing Jewish quest to live out God’s covenant in everyday life.

3. Ancient rivalries must not define Christian-Jewish relations today.

Although today we know Christianity and Judaism as separate religions, what became the church was a movement within the Jewish community for many decades after the ministry and resurrection of Jesus. The destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Roman armies in the year 70 of the first century caused a crisis among the Jewish people. Various groups, including Christianity and early rabbinic Judaism, competed for leadership in the Jewish community by claiming that they were the true heirs of biblical Israel. The gospels reflect this rivalry in which the disputants exchanged various accusations. Christian charges of hypocrisy and legalism misrepresent Judaism and constitute an unworthy foundation for Christian self-understanding.

4. Judaism is a living faith, enriched by many centuries of development.

Many Christians mistakenly equate Judaism with biblical Israel. However, Judaism, like Christianity, developed new modes of belief and practice in the centuries after the destruction of the Temple. The rabbinic tradition gave new emphasis and understanding to existing practices, such as communal prayer, study of Torah, and deeds of loving-kindness. Thus Jews could live out the covenant in a world without the Temple. Over time they developed an extensive body of interpretive literature that continues to enrich Jewish life, faith, and self-understanding. Christians cannot fully understand Judaism apart from its post-biblical development, which can also enrich and enhance Christian faith.

5. The Bible both connects and separates Jews and Christians.

Some Jews and Christians today, in the process of studying the Bible together, are discovering new ways of reading that provide a deeper appreciation of both traditions. While the two communities draw from the same biblical texts of ancient Israel, they have developed different traditions of interpretation. Christians view these texts through the lens of the New Testament, while Jews understand these scriptures through the traditions of rabbinic commentary.

Referring to the first part of the Christian Bible as the “Old Testament” can wrongly suggest that these texts are obsolete. Alternative expressions ˆ “Hebrew Bible,” “First Testament,” or “Shared Testament” – although also problematic, may better express the church’s renewed appreciation of the ongoing power of these scriptures for both Jews and Christians.

6. Affirming God’s enduring covenant with the Jewish people has consequences for Christian understandings of salvation.
Christians meet God’s saving power in the person of Jesus Christ and believe that this power is available to all people in him. Christians have therefore taught for centuries that salvation is available only through Jesus Christ. With their recent realization that God’s covenant with the Jewish people is eternal, Christians can now recognize in the Jewish tradition the redemptive power of God at work. If Jews, who do not share our faith in Christ, are in a saving covenant with God, then Christians need new ways of understanding the universal significance of Christ.

7. Christians should not target Jews for conversion.

In view of our conviction that Jews are in an eternal covenant with God, we renounce missionary efforts directed at converting Jews. At the same time, we welcome opportunities for Jews and Christians to bear witness to their respective experiences of God’s saving ways. Neither can properly claim to possess knowledge of God entirely or exclusively.

8. Christian worship that teaches contempt for Judaism dishonors God.

The New Testament contains passages that have frequently generated negative attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. The use of these texts in the context of worship increases the likelihood of hostility toward Jews. Christian anti-Jewish theology has also shaped worship in ways that denigrate Judaism and foster contempt for Jews. We urge church leaders to examine scripture readings, prayers, the structure of the lectionaries, preaching and hymns to remove distorted images of Judaism. A reformed Christian liturgical life would express a new relationship with Jews and thus honor God.

9. We affirm the importance of the land of Israel for the life of the Jewish people.

The land of Israel has always been of central significance to the Jewish people. However, Christian theology charged that the Jews had condemned themselves to homelessness by rejecting God’s Messiah. Such supersessionism precluded any possibility for Christian understanding of Jewish attachment to the land of Israel. Christian theologians can no longer avoid this crucial issue, especially in light of the complex and persistent conflict over the land. Recognizing that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in peace and security in a homeland of their own, we call for efforts that contribute to a just peace among all the peoples in the region.

10. Christians should work with Jews for the healing of the world.

For almost a century, Jews and Christians in the United States have worked together on important social issues, such as the rights of workers and civil rights. As violence and terrorism intensify in our time, we must strengthen our common efforts in the work of justice and peace to which both the prophets of Israel and Jesus summon us. These common efforts by Jews and Christians offer a vision of human solidarity and provide models of collaboration with people of other faith traditions.

* A Sacred Obligation consists of an introduction followed by ten theses or convictions. For the entire statement and more information on the Christian Scholars Group see their website: http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/ The statement was the joint effort of the group’s twenty-one members in 2002: Norman Beck (Texas Lutheran University), Mary Boys (Union Theological Seminary, CSG Chair), Rosann Catalano (Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies), Philip A. Cunningham (Boston College), Celia Deutsch (Barnard College), Alice L. Eckardt (Lehigh University, emerita), Eugene J. Fisher (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops), Eva Fleischner (Montclair State University, emerita), Deirdre Good (General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church), Walter Harrelson (Vanderbilt University Divinity School, emeritus), Michael McGarry (Tantur Ecumenical Institute), John C. Merkle (College of St. Benedict), John T. Pawlikowski (Catholic Theological Union), Peter Pettit (Muhlenberg College), Peter C. Phan (Georgetown University), Jean Pierre Ruiz (St. John’s University), Franklin Sherman (Muhlenberg College, emeritus), Joann Spillman (Rockhurst College), John Townsend (Episcopal Divinity School, emeritus, Harvard Divinity School), Joseph Tyson (Southern Methodist University, emeritus), and Clark Williamson (Christian Theological Seminary).
Matthew Hockenos

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

Dear Friends,

May I once again remind you that any comments on the contents of these Newsletters should be sent to me at my personal address = jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

At this season of Pentecost, can we all join in the following:

Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden,
und preiset ihm, alle Völker!
Denn seine Gnade und Wahrheit waltet
über uns in Ewigkeit.
Alleluja

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Pringle The Master Plan
b) Albert, Maria Laach und der Nationalsozialismus

2) Book notes:

a) Rohm and Thierfelder, Juden-Christen-Deutsche 1941-45
b) Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im Dritten Reich
c) ed. Kaiser, Zwangsarbeit in Diakonie und Kirche 1939-45
d) ed. Benz, Selbstbehauptung und Opposition. Kirche als Ort des Widerstandes gegen staatliche Diktatur

3) Journal articles

a) Perry, Nazifying Christmas
b) Kaminsky Zwischen Rassenhygiene und Biotechnologie

1a) Heather Pringle, The Master Plan. Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust.
London: Fourth Estate 2006. 463 Pp. ISBN 13-978-0-00-714812-7 GBP 20.00

After the review in our April issue of Karla Poewe’s illuminating survey of “New Religions and the Nazis”, I now send you another one on the related subject of the Nazi cult of the “Aryan” race by Heather Pringle, who lives in the Vancouver area. Heather Pringle has previously written a number of books on archaeology and historical anthropology. Along the way she learnt of the frenetic interest in archaeology displayed by Heinrich Himmler, one of Nazism’s chief leaders, seeking to prove the existence and virtues of a pre-historic Aryan race. Although not a German historian, she armed herself with a researcher and a translator, and spent several years investigating this extraordinary tale. Her findings about the Nazis‚ Master Plan, and the agency principally instrumental in devising its contours, are the first account to appear in English, after an academic study by Professor Michael Kater appeared in German some years ago.

All students of Nazism are familiar with the fixation on race, which Hitler and his followers saw as the key both to history and to the future of the German Volk. But historians are now paying more attention to the way in which these often vague and emotion-ridden theories were given practical and institutional form as part of the unprecedented operation in social engineering which the Nazis launched. One such enterprise, undertaken as part of Himmler’s ever-growing empire, was a relatively small agency called the Ahnenerbe or “the legacy of our ancestors”. A bevy of professors, some genuine and some charlatans, was recruited to investigate the roots of the Aryan race, seeking to show its superiority, both physically and morally over all other races, and to link it to modern Germany. Ms. Pringle’s book describes the activities of this outfit, its pseudo-religious character, and its eventual sinister role in the final cataclysm of the Holocaust.

Himmler’s aim was to send out expeditions to various parts of the world in order to trace the Aryan race and to gather up any artifacts, legends, inscriptions, folk-tales, or literature which might still remain to be uncovered. As Ms Pringle makes clear, there was no rational scientific validity to these investigations, since the conclusions had already been drawn. But the so-called scholars sent out by Himmler were themselves already convinced of the Nazis‚ political goals, and saw their mission as unearthing the evidence to provide justification for these far-fetched claims from pre-history.

Ms. Pringle’s main interest is to describe how these expeditions into the distant past fared in such countries as Sweden, Finland, the Balkans and most remarkably of all, Tibet. She not only has worked through the remaining papers of the Ahnenerbe itself, but has also managed to interview some survivors, or the widows of participants. These contacts gave her the opportunity to see the appeal of romantic discoveries and exotic places for the Ahnenerbe’s missionaries. But she remains thoroughly sceptical about the attempt to reconstruct a mythical past as well as about the political implications which these men drew.

Interestingly enough, Hitler was also sceptical. He openly poured scorn on Himmler’s passionate engagement with northern European pre-history, and complained about his subordinate’s “digging up villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds”. But Himmler persevered. He ensured that his beloved hobby, and the agency he founded to advance the cause, was supplied with sufficient resources to bolster the Nazi claims for Aryan superiority. But he also recognized the need to deflect Hitler’s wrathful outbursts against dilettantish investigations of mud huts and myths. He therefore tried to give the Ahnenerbe a more academic tone and appointed as its chief scholar the Professor of Sanskrit at Munich University, Walther Wüst. At the same time, he saw that the ambitious young Nazis he recruited could give more immediate service to the cause by acting as political informants, especially on trips abroad. It was the beginning of the descent into the corrupt underworld of the Nazi regime.

Heather Pringle’s forte lies in her ability to depict the range of personalities employed by or related to the Ahnenerbe agency, and to evoke the atmosphere in the far-fetched places where they undertook their researches. (A fuller account of the 1938-39 expedition to Tibet can be found in Christopher Hale’s book Himmler’s Crusade, John Wiley 2003). Ms. Pringle places this episode in its wider political context.

The outbreak of war put an end to such ambitious trips abroad. The Ahnenerbe was obliged to concentrate on more urgent and war-related goals. For example, as soon as Poland was conquered, teams were dispatched to plunder its treasures and add them to the Ahnenerbe’s collections. In fifteen months, these thieving scholars managed to ransack 500 castles, estates, and private mansions, 102 libraries, 75 museums, 3 art galleries and 10 coin collections. And this was after both Goering and the Gestapo had already sent their own agents to make off with priceless artifacts. This set an ominous precedent for future pillaging expeditions in other Nazi-ravaged lands.

These grandiose schemes for looting Europe’s past heritage were, however, only part of the far-reaching proposals for reconstructing the whole continent according to Nazi racial doctrines. This was to be the Master Plan for the future. Germany’s military victories of 1939 to 1942 provided the incentive for Himmler to mobilize his by now considerable staffs to realize his long-held dreams. His principal goal consisted of building new agricultural settlements for the victorious troops, particularly the SS, where they would return to the pure Nordic ways of their ancestors. In Himmler’s eyes, the German East extending as far as the Urals was to be cultivated like a hothouse of German blood. It was to be the greatest piece of colonization the world had ever seen Ahnenerbe’s role was to provide the ideological justification for such a fateful enterprise.

At the same time, this master plan had a far more sinister side, namely the elimination of all racially unwanted elements, particularly the Jews. But German racial scholars had failed to find any clear definition of how the Jews were to be identified after so many centuries of intermarriage. Jewish blood was tainted. But how could it be biologically tracked down and eliminated? As the German conquerors swept over Poland and the Soviet Union, their Einsatzgruppen were set to work to murder en masse all readily identifiable Jews. But there were others. Ahnenerbe experts were recruited to use their scientific skills to ensure that doubtful cases were correctly categorized. At the same time, other experts were engaged in medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Most notorious was the case of Bruno Beger – he is still alive – who had been a member of the Tibet expedition, but who now took part in a large-scale project of skull measurements aimed at pinpointing the mental and racial characteristics of the Jewish race. To obtain enough specimens, an Ahnenerbe researcher – either Bruno Beger or anatomist August Hirt – suggested measuring the skulls of all Jewish Bolshevik Commissars captured in Russia, and turning their corpses over to the anatomy department of Strassburg University. This was later extended to victims at concentration camp closer to home base. Beger personally selected Jews in Auschwitz, who were then transferred to Natzweiler, close to Strassburg, and gassed there. Their bodies were then dissected for the specially-preserved Jewish skeletal collection. Only the end of the war precluded the vast expansion of these criminal experiments.

Himmler committed suicide while in British custody a few days after the end of hostilities. But enough of the Ahnenerbe’s records were captured for use in the Nuremberg Doctors‚ Trials to give a damning indictment of the perverted activities of these officials, acting under Himmler’s orders. In 1947, the Ahnenerbe’s managing director, Wolfram Sievers, was executed for his part in these heinous crimes. Most of the other so-called scholars, however, escaped with only light penalties. Some even got back their university positions. Beger spent more than a decade in freedom. In 1960 he was temporarily arrested, but released. Not until 1970 was he brought to trial for his part in the 86 Natzweiler murders. He was sentenced to a three-year prison term, later reduced.

Heather Pringle’s final chapter describes – with remarkable restraint – her interview with Beger in 2002. At the age of ninety-one, he expressed no regret or compassion for those he had helped to murder. Instead he saw himself as much wronged and falsely imprisoned by the politics of the post-war state. “This hideous self-pity was terrible to witness”, she comments. But Beger was not alone. Ms Pringle has no definite answer as to why such intelligent men crossed over the moral chasm to descend into barbarism. The closest she can suggest is that some combination of fatal ambition,. moral weakness and unthinking prejudice, motivated their conduct. But her story of the Nazi Ahnenerbe shows how forcefully scientific expertise can be manipulated for atrocious purposes. The careers she has so ably described stand as a warning we cannot afford to forget.

JSC

1b) Marcel Albert, Die Benediktinerabtei Maria Laach und der Nationalsozialismus
(Paderborn: Schoningh Verlag, 2004), 261 pp, ISBN: 3-506-70135-5

The Benedictine abbey, Maria Laach, poses a number of interpretative
challenges for historians writing on Roman Catholicism during the Third
Reich. This influential monastery in the Eifel became known as a center for
right-wing Catholicism already during the Weimar Republic. Its leaders
enthusiastically greeted the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. It was the only
Benedictine monastery in the Rhineland not to be confiscated by the Nazi
regime, even if part of the facility was converted into a hospital for
wounded soldiers. Yet at the same time, it provided a sanctuary for Konrad
Adenauer in 1934, who had been unceremoniously removed from his position as
mayor of Cologne. In addition, its leaders became the target of numerous
Gestapo interrogations, even as rumors spread that the monastery was to be
appropriated by the state. Maria Laach, in other words, resists simple
categories of resistance, collaboration, victimhood or capitulation.
Marcel Albert’s book deftly navigates this difficult terrain. Refreshingly
concise, it relies heavily on the unpublished memoirs of Ildefons Hedwegen,
a conservative monarchist who served as abbot of Maria Laach until his death
in 1946. At times self-serving, these memoirs provide the narrative thread
for this book. Albert quotes extensively from these, all the while
commenting on the accuracy and reliability of Hedwegen’s account. He also
makes extensive use of the archival holdings of the monastery itself,
supplementing these with official state and police reports. Throughout, he
retains a morally dispassionate tone, letting the events and Hedwegen’s
words speak for themselves.

Albert underscores that Maria Laach became a focal point in the Weimar
Republic for those right-wing Catholics disillusioned by the collapse of the
Hohenzollern monarchy and outraged at the Center Party’s coalitions with the
SPD. The monks, politicians, businessmen, theologians and students who
gathered there were strongly influenced by the idea of a coming “Reich,”
hoping to build a third Holy Roman Empire. Men such as Carl Schmitt, Emil
Ritter, Carl Eduward Herzog von Sachsen-Coburg all participated in events
sponsored by the monastery. Why did Maria Laach assume this function? Albert
convincingly explains that the Benedictines here attracted members of the
Catholic aristocracy, those who were more receptive to the right-wing
nationalist movements of the time.

Not surprisingly, both Hedwegen and many others at Maria Laach embraced
Hitler’s regime and even chided other Catholics for failing to work with the
new state. “Blood, soil and fate are the appropriate expressions for the
funamental powers of the time,” Hedwegen avowed. The rise of the Third
Reich, was part of the workings and designs of God. Hitler’s promise to
build Germany on a Christian foundation on March 21, 1933 led several monks
to hang a picture of Hitler in the abbey and to unfurl the black white red
flag of the bygone Kaiserreich. As late as 1939, one of the members of the
abbey, an artist who had converted to Catholicism, P. Theodor Bogler,
published a “Briefen an einen jungen Soldaten,” in which he let loose a
virulently anti-Jewish polemic. This openness to National Socialism by many
at Maria Laach did not go unnoticed by the Nazi press. The “Westdeutsche
Beobachter” reported that “one knows that the spirititual-religious
educational work of the Benedictines of Maria-Laach for years has
increasingly viewed itself responsible for all of the duties to renew the
national conscience.”

Yet the Nazis did not always reciprocate the embrace of the monks. Instead,
the Gestapo began to interrogate the monks, arresting one monk on charges of
homosexuality. The printing of Rosenberg’s “Myth of the 20th Century” and
the demotion of Franz von Papen politically forced Hedwegen to temper his
hopes already in 1934 of exerting a Christian influence on the new state.
Although the monastery was not closed down, as were all other Benedictine
abbeys in the area, its members had become a regular target of state
attacks. Albert makes it clear, however, that it was only the Nazi
persecution of the churches and not the attacks on the Jews or Nazi military
aggression that forced Hedwegen to see the regime in a new light. Similarly,
Hedwegen housed Adenauer for almost a year in his abbey not necessarily
because he agreed with the Center Party politician’s Weltanschauung, but
because Adenauer was a childhood friend from his days at school.
The book falls short only in its closing chapters. Albert shows that the
abbey cultivated a positive relationship to Adenauer and the CDU after 1945,
but retained its monarchist beliefs. One would have liked a more extensive
description of the role that the monastery played in the construction of the
West German state and culture. One might have also welcomed a discussion of
how the abbey dealt with criticism of its support for National Socialism
launched by Heinrich Boll, who famously pilloried it in his work, “Billard
um halb Zehn.” This criticism notwithstanding, this remains an excellent,
brief account of Maria Laach, one that thanks to its morally neutral tone
will leave readers eagerly awaiting a sequel.

Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University

2) Book notes:

a) E. Röhm and Jörg Thiefelder, Juden-Christen-Deutsche Band 4/1 1941-1945
Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag 2004, 704 Pp. ISBN 3-7668-3887-3

This is the latest volume in this excellently researched series, and covers the last years of the Second World War, when the Nazi persecution and mass murder of the Jews was at its height. The volume concentrates on the efforts made by the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, to rescue or assist these Jewish victims, not only in Germany, but also in western Europe. This scholarship is compendious and up-to-date, and includes replicas of surviving documents. Notable figures who helped Jews, like the Catholics Margarete Sommer and Gertrud Luckner are given their due, as are also the heroic people of Le Chambon in southern France, whose Huguenot pastor Andre Trocme mobilized his community to offer sanctuary to hundreds of Jews. On a smaller scale, tribute is paid to the whole series of Lutheran pastors and their wives who sheltered Jews on the run in Württemberg. And the efforts of Protestants in the World Council of Churches and in Scandinavia, Holland and England are described. Much of this information has been known for some time, but it is all assembled here in meticulous and very readable detail.

The authors do not venture on to the controversial topic of the Vatican’s attempts to rescue Jews, and nothing is said about eastern Europe. But the story of those Germans who were involved in this dangerous and fateful enterprise, and what they managed to achieve, is here put in its proper context. Presumably there will be another Part to this Volume 4, and it will be much welcomed.

b) eds. Thomas Kaufmann and Harry Oelke, Evangelische Kirchenhistoriker im “Dritten Reich”. Gütersloh: Chr.Kaiser Gütersloher Verlagshaus 2002

The German Evangelical Church has long prided itself on the eminence of its church historians. Their positions at most German universities made them a prominent part of the Establishment. Adolf von Harnack, for instance, enjoyed a world-wide reputation as the most distinguished historian of his generation. They were frequently called on to express their views as authoritative spokesmen for church and society. But in the turbulent political circumstances of the early twentieth century, these men increasingly became involved in trying to make sense of their political and cultural dilemmas, and turned to extremist movements such as the Nazi Party as the answer to Germany’s problems. Such leading scholars as Emanuel Hirsch and Erich Seeberg frequently used their academic status to advance their political preferences in support of the new regime. Their opponents championed the orthodox Confessing Church with equal vigour. Two younger scholars, Thomas Kaufmann and Harry Oelke, have now edited an earlier conference proceedings which brings out clearly the stances adopted by these much disputed figures. They show how readily theology can be misused for political purposes, but also how the wider questions of nationalism, the effects of the first world war, church goverance and the writing of church history were formative factors in the mid-set of these academics.

b) ed. Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, Zwangsarbeit in Diakonie und Kirche 1939-45,
(Konfession und Gesellschaft, Band 32). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 2005 464 Pp.
ISBN 3-17-018347-8

Sixty years after the end of the second world war, Germans are still wrapt up in Verhangenheitsbewältigung or coming to terms with the past. Of late, one group has been re-activating their sense of self-pity with numerous studies of German sufferings at the hands of the inhumane British Air Force and its murderous and indiscriminate bombing. Another group, more remorsefully, is now breast-beating about the mistreatment meted out to the several million foreign workers in Germany during the war, many of whom were deported there as forced labour in particularly punitive circumstances. The need to compensate those still alive for their horrendous experiences has at last been recognized and accepted. Many large industries are already instituting payments. But the situation in smaller institutions, such as the churches, is more problematic. Hence the value of this collection of essays dealing with the experiences in various branches of the German Evangelical Churches, such as church-run hospitals, old age homes, forestry camps or local parishes. The book resulted from a nation-wide investigation of the churches‚ deployment of such forced labour – both male and female -during these turbulent years.

Edited by Jochen-Christoph Kaiser, a senior Professor of Church History at Marburg University, and published in the prestigious series Konfession und Gesellschaft, this volume provides a particularly sharp picture of local conditions, and gives details of the criminally inhumane sadism of many Germans, especially in the police and Gestapo.

Necessarily the evidence is largely drawn from official reports and statistics. Only occasionally are the voices of the victims themselves heard, and then only in retrospect.

In recent years the churches have attempted to make some recompense to the survivors in a spirit of confession of guilt and reconciliation. These gestures include invitations to those who could be traced to return as guests to the communities in Germany where they had been forced to work. Also the German Protestant Churches are eager to disburse some 10 million D Mark to those now in need. It is hardly surprising that the response to such initiatives after so many years is ambivalent. Many of the former slave labourers are reluctant to dwell on the more painful aspects of their Germnan experiences. The prospect of receiving some financial recompense may also affect their answers to the well-meaning enquiries by the authors of these reports. Readers of these accounts should bear this consideration in mind.

c) ed Wolfgang Benz, Selbstbehauptung und Opposition. Kirche als Ort des Widerstandes gegen staatliche Diktatur. Berlin: Metropol Verlag 2003 212 Pp. ISBN 3-936411-32-8

Over the past two decades, the self-understanding of the German Protestant churches, as reflected in their historiography, has undergone a radical alteration, largely due to the repercussions of, and reflections upon, the turbulent political events of the past century. During the first half of the twentieth century, these churches saw themselves as loyal upholders of the political and social establishment. But the persecution of the churches by the two dictatorships, first of the Nazis, and, more latterly by the Communists in the former German Democratic Republic, caused a much more critical stance to emerge. Church members have now begun to realize that the role of the churches is no longer to act as the obedient spokemen for the ruling power. Rather it is to stand by the poor and oppressed, to speak out as the voice of the voiceless, and to see themselves as advocates for peace and justice, if necessary against the power of the nation-state.

This collection of essays pays tribute to some of those who valiantly championed this new theologically-based insight, and gives specific details of the struggles they faced.

Some leading figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer are already well known. But others are not so familiar, such as Adolf Freudenberg, who was exiled because of his Jewish wife, and became the refugee co-ordinator for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, particulaly seeking to assist persecuted Jews to escape from the Nazi clutches. So too the courageous group of notable but lonely women members of the Confessing Church in Berlin, Elisabeth Schmitz, Marga Meusel and Gertrud Staewen, deserve to be better known. As core members of Niemöller’s parish in Dahlem, they were early alerted to the need to mobilize opposition to Nazi injustices. The memoranda they prepared for their Synods as early as 1935 and 1936 on the mistreatment of the Jews were significant contributions. Unfortunately, in a male-dominated church, their witness was more or less ignored.

Institutionally, only the Jehovah’s Witnesses adopted a courageous attitude of non-collaboration with the Nazi state. But their special theological premises are not here explored. Instead, we are given a perceptive chapter on the ambivalent responses of such free churches as the Baptists and the Brethren. Basically all of these smaller communities concentrated on the personal salvation of their members, and so lacked any theological capability of organizing a political stance contrary to Romans 13:1 Inevitably they became fellow travelers with the Nazi regime.

After 1945, the spectre of totalitarian rule was carried forward in the Soviet-occupied zone in what became the German Democratic Republic. Persecution of the churches under Communism was equally repressive, at least for the first decade. Open opposition was ruthlessly suppressed. But in the later years, the church leaders were again prepared to compromise in favour of a “Church in Socialism”, largely because of the dramatic decline in church membership. It was left to youth groups to maintain the tradition of vocal resistance, despite the ever-watchful surveillance of the Stasi. The short chapter on the youth groups‚ struggles in Jena which concludes the book makes clear the difficulties and dilemmas they faced. But, even with their success in 1989, these youth groups were not able to develop a coherent policy for the whole church. That still remains to be worked out. Unfortunately, because of a lack of co-ordination between the authors, and the absence of any connecting theme, this book does little to advance our understanding of this task.

3a) Joe Perry, “Nazifying Christmas: Political Culture and Popular celebration in the Third Reich” in Central European History, Vol. 38, no. 4, 2005, Pp. 275ff.

Joe Perry argues that celebrations of public holidays in the Third Reich were not a simple matter of top-down control or a propaganda exercise which evoked passive submission or private resistance. Instead, the Nazis built up active and enthusiastic support for their racially-based regime through ceremoinies which combined both tradition and novelty. Christmas had, of course, its own long-standing traditions, but the Nazis succeeded in redefining this feast in terms of national belonging with neo-pagan overtones. Nazi ideologues made much of the Nordic origins of the Aryan race. So the winter solstice, the yule log and mistletoe were recruited for their purposes. But these items were of 19th century origin. The Nazi innovation was more to stress the uniqueness of the racial connections, which could be mobilized in large-scale gatherings around the “Nordic” Christmas tree. Naturally Jews were excluded. Father Christmas, as champion of the Winter relief collection, replaced the saintly Nicholas. Radio broadcasts, reaching millions, emphasized the Nazi Party’s holiday charity in addresses which carefully avoided any reference to God or Christ. Shoppers for Christmas presents were encouraged to buy German handicrafts and to avoid Jewish-owned department stores. The Winter releif campaigns were also highly politicized, both in the appeals and in the distributions. Both sought to get rid of Christian sympathy and instead to promote German national unity. To be sure, the Nazi de-christianization of Christmas met with strong and largely successful resistance from the churches. During the war, despite all sorts of difficulties imposed on the military chaplains, the troops still wanted a traditoional Christmas, including familiar carols. So the Nazi attempts to turn the Christmas myth into a celebration of an exclusionary racial utopia were only partially effective, and of course did not survive the regime’s fall. But by pushing and nationalizing its racial ideology, the Party did manage to engage large numbers of people, and hence “secularized” German society still further.

b) Uwe Kaminsky, “Zwischen Rassenhygiene und Biotechnologie. Die Fortsetzung der eugenischen Debatte in Diakonie und Kirche 1945 bis 1969” in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Vol 116, no 2, 2005
In this article the author discusses how the debates over eugenics, including sterilization, abortion and euthanasia, which had been widely launched in the 1920s in Germany, were then taken over by the Nazis and implemented for their own racial purposes. After the war, the same issues still remained, but the shadow of the Nazi past prevented any large-scale facing of the issues. Remarkably, however, many of the so-called scientists who has participated in the Nazi experiments, continued to uphold their previous views, and often in the same jobs as before. In the churches, the loss of influence felt in the 1960s and 1970s meant that the topic of eugenics no longer aroused concern. The church eugenics commission was dissolved. But the ethical issues associated with biotechnology still remain.

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

Dear Friends,

The June issue will be sent to you a day or two late since I will be out of town. I am glad to tell you that Matthew Hockenos of Skidmore College has once again kindly agreed to guest edit the summer issue for July/August, which will come out at the end of July.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Genocide in Rwanda
b) God and Caesar in China
c) O. Schutz. Begegnung von Kirche und Welt
d) Ward, Nationalprotestantische Mentalitaten

2) Journal articles:

a) Diplomats and Missionaries
b) The Rosenstrasse debate reconsidered

3) Book notes: Gray Notes. Ambiguities in the Holocaust.

1a) eds Carol Rittner, John K.Roth and Wendy Whitworth, Genocide in Rwanda.
Complicity of the Churches? St.Paul, Minnesota: Paragon House 2004, 319 pp.
ISBN 1-55778-837-5

In 1994 a horrendous genocide took place in the small land-locked country of Rwanda in central Africa, when hundreds of thousands of one ethnic group, the Tutsis, were slaughtered by another group, the Hutus. Most disastrously, the majority of those involved, both victims and perpetrators, belonged to one or other Christian community. Nine years later, an international seminar was organized in London to see if sufficient time had elapsed for some assessment to be made of the extent to which the Christian churches were complicit in these massacres. The papers presented here, and other related contributions, have now been sensitively compiled and edited in a manner designed, not to apportion blame, but to come to terms with the appalling events. Even so, the topic was so “hot”, religiously and politically, that several contributions were withdrawn, and attempts were made to derail publication.

These reflections combine both anguish and analysis, and seek to cogitate on the conditions which made such devastation possible. Most pertinently, these essays seek to ask what role the churches played in the Rwandan self-destruction. Can there be a post-genocide resurrection and redemption of that nation’s Christian identity?

Several contributors describe the deep-seated and long-standing ethnic conflicts which had led to repeated and horrific violence. Christian evangelization, whether by low-church Protestants or French-led Catholics, had been ineffective in mediating such tensions. Indeed, in many cases, Christian sympathies for the down-trodden Hutus had led to one-sided demonization of their Tutsi rivals. As a result, the Christian churches‚ higher authorities witnessed the massacres in a kind of total paralysis. Despite protests by the Pope, no bishop, priest or ordinary layman was condemned for their part in the genocide. It was a situation in which some church leaders confronted abusers of power, others consorted with them, and still others did both. The moral imperative of safeguarding human rights became confused and contradictory.

It is clear that the sudden explosion of violence caused by the shooting down of a plane carrying the Presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi could not have been predicted. But the underlying tensions only needed this spark. The next 100 days saw an escalating and irreversible outburst of killings which the churches were impotent to prevent. So too was the United Nations‚ tiny force. The early and agonized appeals by the Pope fell on deaf ears. A graphic description by an American Mother Superior visiting her order’s convents during these events brings out the traumatic atmosphere of fear endured by these sisters and those they sought to protect. The Vatican’s Cardinal Etchegaray, who went to Rwanda twice at the Pope’s bidding, spoke of the “abyss of horror” he discovered there. He found the complicity of the churches only too obvious when church sanctuaries, places of worship and prayer, had become the actual sites of mass murder committed by church members against their fellow Christians. Inevitably the churches have had to carry the blame for the fanaticism of some of their members. But significant numbers of prominent Christians were involved, as recorded here in detail by several contributors. The silence of the bishops during the genocide has left a particularly painful memory. It was evidence, to some observers, that in Africa tribalism was, and is, more powerful than the waters of baptism.

Other contributors, particularly David Gushee in a perceptive chapter, see parallels with other genocides and draw on the immense literature generated by the European Holocaust to identify the genocidal mentality which afflicted Rwandan Hutus. The issue is also raised as to how far such mentalities were a legacy either of the European colonial rulers or of the churches they fostered. But in post-colonial Rwanda, the long-privileged Tutsi were displaced by the down-trodden but revengeful Hutus. And the radicalization and racialization of ethnicity in the twenty-five years before the massacres took place can only be seen as an indigenous growth. The influence of the churches was not used to counter these dangerous tendencies, and hence their complicity with the perpetrators can be deduced, even when they called, in vain, for a cessation of the mass murders.

Outsiders, especially church leaders abroad, from the Pope down, usually deplored all violence but refrained from too narrowly apportioning responsibility. As Margaret Brearley shows, this was largely due to ignorance of the background. Rwanda was a far-off country about which we knew little or nothing – to borrow Neville Chamberlain’s famous words. Too often, it seemed, the world church press assumed that tribal murders were somehow normative and less culpable in Africa than in Europe. Only a few papers tackled the vital question of why such a genocide could occur in what had been the most Christian country on the African continent.

The volume also includes a photo essay, showing the bullet-scarred, bloodied walls and desecrated sanctuaries of several churches and convents, where skeletal body parts and rotting clothing still remain as evidence of the genocide. The ruins at Kigali and Kibuye now join those of Auschwitz and Majdanek.

As one of the editors, John Roth, rightly remarks: “The enormity of this tragedy makes it important to pose questions thoughtfully, to consider responsibility carefully, to assess evidence critically and to draw conclusions judiciously.” The contributions in this book can only be a beginning, but they set a sober and somber, even heart-breaking, tone with which these dire events should be evaluated. If the conclusions drawn are, in the main, critical of the national churches in Rwanda, nevertheless the editors hope that the work will assist in the post-genocide process of healing and eventual reconciliation. JSC

1b) eds Jason Kindopp and Carol Lee Hamrin, God and Caesar in China. Policy Implications of Church-State Tensions. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute 2004, 200 pp ISBN 0-8157-4937-6

Western commentators on the history of the Christian Churches in China during the past hundred years often draw a striking contrast between the early decades up to 1949 when missionary evangelism, expansion and institution building seemed to offer optimistic prospects, and the subsequent five decades of Communist anti-Christian persecution and hostility. But with a longer perspective, historians are putting these developments into the wider picture of how China’s rulers have historically dealt with the impact of religions, both native and foreign-imported, as they have sought to impose stability and social control. God and Caesar in China have not often been found to be in harmony. This is the lesson drawn in this collection of essays, edited by two American scholars Jason Kindopp and Carol Hamrin. Their contributors include both American and Chinese scholars whose well-researched observations on the complexity of religion-state relations are written with commendable objectivity and deserve careful attention.
In Jason Kindopp’s view, the present tensions between the undemocratic regime of the Communist Party and the local religious bodies are only repeating a lengthy tradition whereby the guardians of China’s social and political order have zealously repressed autonomous religious groups. In the days of the former Emperors and their totalistic claims, any alternative to their monopolistic hierarchy was an affront to be ruthlessly quashed. But, at the same time, popular uprisings connected with some form of religious organization are well attested, as for example the prominent Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century. But the very continuity of such antagonisms shows that the present confrontations are not solely due to the Marxist ideology.

The most recent decades show that the Communist rulers now recognize that religion cannot be eradicated. Instead it must be controlled. Just how this reassertion of state dominance is being carried out is considered in the first group of these essays, while the second describes the reactions of the major Catholic and Protestant communities. The book closes with a short consideration of how religious freedom and human rights in China may be more fully encouraged from abroad.

As Professor Bays points out, regulations of religious groups by requiring some form of registration or licensing has been in place for a thousand years. An appropriate bureaucratic apparatus was developed long ago. Fears of political rebellion provoked by any kind of messianic eschatology were apparently well-founded. Civic loyalty was the top priority. Only in the nineteenth century, due to the intrusions of western traders, were foreign religions given a special status. The resulting weakening of the Chinese state, leading to the collapse of the imperial system in 1911, provided the only period when the bureaucracy’s suspicions of political subversion could not be enforced. The reassertion of state control under the Communists therefore can be seen as more “normal” by the canons of Chinese history.

Mao’s radical programme to eradicate religion – the so-called Cultural Revolution of the 1970s – was clearly a failure. After 1978 his successors have instead opted for a strategy of sticks and carrots, very similar to authoritarian regimes elsewhere. In this setting religious freedom is limited to personal religious belief and “normal”, i.e. government-sanctioned religious activities. The state Religious Affairs Bureau is a nation-wide apparatus, staffed by individuals of varying quality, but available for any policy changes dictated by the Politburo. Under the Bureau’s auspices, the affairs of the Protestants are controlled through the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and those of the Catholics by the Catholic Patriotic association. More severe regulation, even repression is meted out to unauthorized associations, whose meetings are broken up, members arrested, and finances confiscated. The continuing persecution of the Falungong is a good example. A close watch is kept on church buildings, religious ceremonies, publications and contacts with foreigners. The threat of closure is sufficient to keep the majority of “approved” churches in line. But Communist hostility to Christianity was supplemented by a widely-held antipathy to this foreign import. Even after the expulsion of all foreign missionaries, suspicions still remained that the churches might become “Trojan horses” for western imperialist ambitions. It is still too soon to believe that these resentments have been overcome.

No reliable statistics are available as to the actual numbers of Christians in China. The evidence suggests a remarkable growth in recent years. To some scholars this is proof of the successful evangelization of former years; to others, it is the result of emerging from the dependency on western missions and embracing a Chinese-led polity. The Catholic Church, as Richard Madsen shows, has had a particularly difficult time attempting to steer between government regulation and demands for complete Sinification and their traditional loyalty to the Pope in Rome. At present it seems that a gradual progress of amalgamation is taking place with the Vatican giving its approval of government-sponsored bishops. Convergence may succeed in healing the breach. In any case, the mainly rural enclaves of Catholics do not constitute any threat to the Communist leadership. But the legacy of the past still prevents any better solution.

In the case of the Protestants, as Yihua Xu explains, the establishment of an “official” church was much assisted by the lead already taken in the early decades of the twentieth century by prominent Chinese church members associated with the YMCA or St. John’s University in Shanghai. These Protestants sought to implement the classic strategy of the British Church Missionary Society to encourage the self-government, self-financing and self-propagation of mission churches, and thus to rid themselves of foreign domination. They took advantage of the Communist seizure of power in 1949 to secure their own control of their church institutions. Their interpretations of the Christian message had already led them to embrace a strongly “social-gospel” policy, so that a basis of co-operation with China’s new rulers could be established. The Three-Self Patriotic Movement accepted the regime’s demand to unite all Protestant streams into one denomination, thus overcoming the legacy of the imperialist divisions. Its leadership was largely drawn from the core of urban-trained social reformers in cities such as Shanghai. Under their direction, most mission- or foreign-led institutions, including seminaries and publishing houses, were systematically dismantled or taken over. However, these moves sympathetic to the ruling Communists did not prevent the subsequent large-scale persecution of Protestants during the Cultural Revolution. The TSPM more or less closed down, and was only revived – again under strict government supervision – in the 1980s.

Such moves, however, only prompted the illegal development of groups of Protestant dissidents in the so-called underground churches. The rapid spread of such communities was undoubtedly helped by their refusal to accept the kind of theologically “liberal” teachings, as well as the authoritarian tactics, of the TSPM. Instead they embraced and embrace the more conservative traditions of Protestant evangelicalism and fundamentalism, which appeal more readily to the unorganized congregations especially in the rural areas. Jason Kindopp’s chapter on the Protestant resistance to Communist rule, and to the compulsory assimilationist strategy of the TSPM, is highly critical of the latter for its subservience to China’s political masters, and for the absence of solidarity with their fellow Christians. The TSPM’s programme of forced consolidations, frequent denunciations and compulsory standardization of all ritual forms, were not surprisingly resented and resisted. House churches met secretly and proliferated.
Since 1978 many of these local congregations have reemerged with renewed vigour. Innumerable house churches still continue, and some more exotic sects like the Little Flock also reappeared despite being banned again in 1984. This revival has led to an enormous expansion of Protestant groups and brought pressure on the officially-sanctioned structures. In Kindopp’s opinion, the rise of younger progressive (or less rigidly autocratic) church leaders may produce a wider range of theological options. At the same time, the house churches, especially of the charismatic tradition, have enjoyed their opportunities to expand, based on itineracy and fellowship, seemingly offering real spiritual nourishment. One source claimed that the house church movement has 80 million supporters.

Contacts have also resumed with overseas churches and mission boards. Several of the latter have again sent delegations to China, but usually only to be (allegedly) engaged in secular tasks, such as agricultural development or attached to schools as English language teachers. All these contacts, Kindopp claims, help to make Chinese Christianity a viable force in Chinese society. But whether it will play any significant role in mitigating or modifying the Communist one-party dictatorship remains to be seen.
The final two chapters discuss the role of religion in China-Untied States relations. In so far as both countries clothe their secular objectives in semi-religious language and claim their moral superiority over all others, the resulting clash is basically a dialogue of the deaf. China’s breaches of human rights, as in Tibet, are contrasted with American imperialist ambitions in Iraq or Afghanistan. Given such obstacles to understanding, it is unlikely that any common ground will be found in the near future. But, according to Carol Hamrin, both the United States‚ and the Chinese governments are agreed on their opposition to terrorism, which they attribute to religious extremism. The logical am therefore should be to encourage religious freedom, through active participation by non-governmental agencies with similar aims. But whether the legacy of earlier misunderstandings and hostility will be so easily overcome is still a matter for future debate.
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c) Olivier Schutz, Begegnung von Kirche und Welt: Die Grundung Katholischer
Akademien in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 1945-1975 (Paderborn: Schoningh
Verlag, 2004), 670 pp. ISBN: 3-506-70251-3

In recent years, many books have appeared examining the social texture of
German Catholicism in the post-1945 era. Olivier Schutz’s work, Begegnung
von Kirche und Welt, focuses on the founding of Catholic Academies in the
Federal Republic from 1945 to 1975. In this massive tome of over 650 pages,
he tells the creation story of every Catholic academy and social institute
in West Germany in the first two decades after the war.

Following the Second World War, Catholic laity, clergy and the hierarchy
sought to play a significant role in rebuilding a nation devastated by war
and imbuing culture and society with Christian values. To this end, they
sought to emphasize Catholic social teachings and extend them to all domains
of society. Traditionally, it was the Catholic Verbande, or ancillary
organizations, that had carried out much of this work. Since many of these
associations had been dissolved during the Nazi years, however, many of the
bishops after the war placed the responsibility for communicating Catholic
social teachings in their own hands. They thus opted to create diocesan
academies that would be entrusted with spreading Catholic values and social
teachings instead of leaving these tasks to Verbande that crossed diocesan
lines. Such an organizational structure dovetailed almost perfectly with the
prevailing conceptions of Catholic Action, which urged laity to go into the
world to spread the Catholic message, but to do so under the aegis and
authority of the local bishop.

Eventually, the academies served as an incubator for ideas in preparation
for the Second Vatican Council and as a vehicle to disseminate the ideas
that took shape there. In turn, the Council inspired others to form still
more Catholic academies, the so-called “children of the council.”
Quite naturally, this book will be of interest primarily to specialists. The
research is prodigious, the focus narrow and the organization somewhat
unwieldy. Schutz perused documents in virtually every available diocesan
archive in addition to materials in the Catholic academies themselves, an
exceptionally impressive achievement by any standard. The list of his
primary sources alone extends over ten pages! He also chose to focus
exclusively on the founding narratives of these academies, and not on their
subsequent histories – course offering, successes (or lack thereof). Schutz
adheres extremely closely to the stories told in his documents, an approach
which occasionally led to overlapping coverage. Frequently missing are the
larger ideological battles and the bigger picture of German Catholicism
since 1945. But as Schutz himself admits in his introduction, this is a work
designed to encourage others to pursue future research on other aspects of
the Catholic academies, a suggestion that subsequent theologians and
historians will no doubt take up.

Mark Edward Ruff, Saint Louis University
ruff@slu.edu

d) ed. M.Gailus and H.Lehmann, Nationalprotestanische Mentalitäten in Deutschland (1870-1970). Konturen, Entwicklunglinien and Umbrüche eines Weltbildes. (Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 214) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005. 472 pp. Euro 66. This review appeared first in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April 2006, and is reprinted with kind permission of the author.

This is a vast scholarly and thoroughly interesting book which nevertheless makes for depressing reading. It is concerned with the genesis, persistence and (not more than hopefully) the break-up of a frame of mind in German Protestantism which began with an inability to distinguish properly between Church and State, and speedily developed into an inability to distinguish between the will of God for the German (Protestant) people, the designs of successive German governments and any putative will of God for anyone else.

What is very remarkable about the origins of this mentality is the speed with which it developed after 1870. Before that date German Protestantism had mirrored very precisely the past history of German Kleinstaaterei,and at the time of German unification there were plenty of church governments which would not touch the religion of the Old Prussian Union, still less that of Bismarck personally, with a barge-pole. But with extraordinary speed the identification of German and Protestant destiny was brought about so completely that even in 1949 Niemöller could denounce the West German state as conceived in the Vatican and born in Washington, and that his frame of mind had also infected the Catholic friends of the Vatican and Washington. The question of whether this mentality has actually gone right through two world wars and the apparently traumatic aftermath of the second gives occasion to a sprightly bout of fisticuffs at the end of the volume between Clemens Vollnhals and Detlef Pollack. Vollnhals, in a characteristically vinegary contribution, maintains that post-1945 nothing changed, that the churches were as loathe to confess any war-guilt and as antisemitic as ever. Pollack insists that a reasonable amount of honest breast-beating did take place. On the curious evidence of opinion polls taken by the American occupying authorities, he shows that what the churches were doing was to voice protests against the hamfistedness of the Americans themselves. One has the feeling that this bout went to Vollnhals on points especially as Detlef’s own statistics show a remarkable recovery of sympathy in principle for the Nazi system in the years after the war.

Much of the German war-theology from 1870s onwards has a familiar ring, but there is a fascinating comparison of the Harnacks, father and son, with the Seebergs, father and son, by Thomas Kaufmann. Both sprang from the privileged Baltic Germans, and the two sons were the last of the great German Protestant mandarins; but while Harnack’s nationalism was of a reasonable cast, Reinhold Seeberg converted Baltic privilege into racism, fought to destabilize the Weimar system and to the delight of his son Erich ( a fine scholar in his own right) evoked a letter of appreciation from Hitler on his death. Elsewhere John Conway defends Pius XII against the more incautious of his detractors and perhaps overestimates the importance of the eleven volumes of documents in the defence edited by Jesuits; Bob Ericksen tries to clear waters muddied by the historiography of Wilhelm Niemöller; and Dagmar Herbrecht relates horrendous stories of the sufferings of bold women who opposed the Aryan Paragraph in the church, and the limited sympathy they obtained from a male-dominated Bekennende Kirche. All required reading, but naught for comfort.

W.R.Ward, Petersfield, U.K.

2a) “Diplomats and Missionaries. The Role played by the German Embassies in Moscow and Rome in the relations between Russia and the Vatican between 1921 and 1929” in Catholic Historical Review, Vol,. 92, no. 1, 2006, pp 25-45.

Winfried Becker, Professor of Modern History at Passau University, has used the extensive files of the German Foreign Ministry for the 1920s to reconstruct the part played by various German diplomats stationed in the newly-established Soviet Union to help the Vatican in its quest to find some basis for a modus vivendi with the new Soviet rulers. The Vatican hoped thereby to be able to rescue what little Catholicism was left after the Revolution, and even considered signing a Concordat. It found the services of German diplomatic middle men to be of value. These latter were anxious both to enhance Germany’s status with a valuable partner such as the Vatican, but also to seek to build on the rather shaky foundation of the 1922 Rapallo Treaty. Interestingly, Becker also shows that there were wide divergences within the Soviet hierarchy, when the Soviet Commissar Chicherin showed himself amenable to discussions (usually held on German soil). But in the end Soviet totalitarian repression and persecution of priests and laity proved too great an obstacle. Pius XI’s illusions were shattered, and instead the wave of Catholic anti-communism was encouraged. In Becker’s view, the friendly help extended to the Vatican by the German Reich made it all the easier to sign the desired Concordat with Hitler in 1933.

2b) The Rosenstrasse protest reconsidered. Following the discussion of this controversy in our November and December issues of last year, there is now a further extensive analysis provided by Antonia Leugers, who is one of the chief protagonists in a long article in Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Kulturgeschichte = http://aps.sulb.uni-saarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html
In this article Dr Leugers takes issue with a new publication by Prof Wolf Gruner, “Widerstand in der Rosenstrasse. Die Fabrik-Aktion und die Verfolgung der ŒMischehen‚1943”. Gruner has put forward his views before, including an article in Central European History, but Leugers now takes issue with this new version.

In Gruner’s view, the successful release of the Jews locked up in the former Jewish community centre after a week was due not to the pressure and protest exerted by their wives in the street outside, so much as to the Gestapo’s having no more use for these men, after they had sorted them out and checked that they were in fact married to non-Jews. In his view, the “heroic” picture of these women’s defiance of the Nazi regime, and their success, is a myth made up largely years after the event to try and paint a more sympathetic picture of the German population, as part of the post-1990 propaganda campaign to make Germans look good. He also takes issue with the basic contention, put forward for example by Nathan Stoltzfuss, that “if only more people had behaved like the wives of the Rosenstrasse, the mass murder of the Jews would never have taken place”. Gruner contends that there never was any intention of deporting these particular victims of Nazi repression, and cites numerous Gestapo documents in support of his argument.

In reply Dr Leugers makes her case plain, though I suspect the battle is by no means over.

3) Book notes: ed.Petropoulos and John K.Roth, Gray Zones. Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books 2005.

Two articles in this collection may be of special interest to our readers:

a) Eva Fleischner, “Who am I?” The struggle for religious identity of Jewish children hidden by Christians during the Shoah, which gives some case studies of the conflictual identities these children were obliged to live through

b) Victoria J.Barnett, The Creation of ethical “Gray Zones” in the German Protestant Church. Reflections on the Historical Quest for Ethical Clarity, which describes the dilemmas of many ordinary Germans as they sought to create a past they could live with. Even if they were not themselves perpetrators of crimes against their Jewish neighbours, they were all caught up in the net of their previous loyalty to Führer and Fatherland. Many had lost the ability to behave ethically, and hence buried their suspect past for several decades. Even though the surviving leaders of German Protestantism claimed that their witness, as members of the Confessing Church, symbolized their anti-Nazi stance, too many others had compromised their ethics in serving the Nazi state. It took years before the resulting falsification of history was acknowledged, let alone repaired. It was truly a gray zone of self-deception or prevarication, both ethically destructive.

My best wishes for you all
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

May I wish a blessed Easter to you all!

Suffering:
See what transformation! These hands so active and powerful
Now are tied, and alone and fainting, you see where your work ends,
Yet you are confident still, and gladly commit what is rightful
Into a stronger hand, and say that you are contented.
You were free for a moment of bliss, then you yielded your freedom
Into the hand of God, that he might perfect it in glory.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Editor’s Note: I am happy to report that our recently held Bonhoeffer Commemoration
held at Regent College, Vancouver went off very successfully. For those not able to be there, Regent College Bookstore has now produced a complete 5 CD set of recordings of all the verbal presentations, under the title “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christian Witness and Martyr 1906-1945.” This set can be ordered from Regent College Bookstore, 5800 University Boulevard, Vancouver V6T 2E4, B.C., Canada (breimer@regent-college.edu) for approx $20.

Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis.
b) Garbe, Theologie zwischen den Weltkriegen
c) Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy
d) Cox, Imperial Fault Lines

2) Professor Gallo’s response to the review of his book last month.

1a) Karla Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis, New York and London: Routledge 2006, xii + 218 pp. ISBN 0-415-29024-4 (hbk), 0415-29025-2 (pbk)

Were the Nazis Christians? Or were Christianity and National Socialism incompatible? Controversy over these questions was recently aroused by the publication of Richard Steigmann-Gall’s book The Holy Reich(Cambridge University Press 2003), which sought to show the lingering attachment of many leading Nazis to some ill-defined form of Christianity. Karla Poewe starts from the other side. Her object is to depict the ideas and actions of those who deliberately sought to create a new religion of Germanic nationalism and racism to replace the now discredited Christianity.

Her principal proponent in this process is Professor Jakob Wilhelm Hauer (1881-1962), whose surviving papers, especially his extensive correspondence, have been well researched by Poewe, who is versed in the study of “fringe” religious movements. Together with kindred spirits such as Matthilde Ludendorff, the wife of the Field Marshal, Ernst Bergmann, the novelist Hans Grimm and the noted anthropologist Hans F.K.Günther, Hauer in the 1920s was determined to build up a new myth and religious sensibility, and to give support to the rising tide of National Socialism. Indeed, Hauer even aimed to make his beliefs the sacred religious centre of the Nazi movement.

Most scholars and orthodox churchmen have dismissed these persons as cranks or pseudo-religious bigots. Their advocacy of German paganism has been ridiculed. Steigmann-Gall downplayed their impact. But Poewe now seeks to rectify these partial judgments. In her view, these ideas played a significant role, especially among the young radicals who formed the cutting edge of the Nazi Party. With dynamic ruthlessness they seized on Hauer’s German Faith Movement to undermine the established churches, even if they abandoned his creed later on once their political power was confirmed.

Hauer had been brought up in pietist circles, was sent out as a missionary to India, and was there greatly influenced by the impact of eastern religions. After the first world war, he shared the widespread disillusionment with both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy, but was allowed to retain his professorship at Tübingen University in comparative religions. He used this platform to build up a network of youth groups, advocating a purely Germanic paganism, and harking back to the mythical roots of pre-Christian Teutonic traditions. In the climate of the 1920s, such ideas found a considerable following, and could easily be linked to concepts of authoritarian and inspired leadership under a German Führer. This idea of a genuinely Nordic faith-based political community of a united nationalistic Volk took advantage of the widespread desire for a regeneration of German national life after the defeat and denigration of the Great War. Poewe rightly sees this trend as part of the popular resistance against the Versailles settlement, and as giving a considerable boost to the fledgling Nazi Party.

Hauer’s attempt to build a faith movement based on völkisch experiences, elements of the Yogic tradition, pre-Christian Germanic beliefs and a touch of German philosophical idealism was, in effect, a deliberate challenge to the rationalist, democratic assumptions of the Weimar Republic’s political ethos. It also rejected any notion of pluralistic society. Hauer’s antisemitism was certainly ethnically based, and his antagonism to Christianity was in part prompted by his belief that Christianity was unable to shake off its Jewish roots. Instead, a German Faith, led by heroic individuals conscious of their historic bloodlines, would revitalize the Volk. The spiritual and the political tasks were to be intimately linked.
Hauer’s creed was based on a belief in a primal religious force, linked to social Darwinist concepts of the superiority of the German race. The German Faith had its links to the Indo-Germanic cultures in ancient Asia, and thus could acquire a “history” with which to combat the Judeo-Christian tradition. By contrast with the latter’s emphasis on original sin and guilt, Hauer offered a heroic German faith and a heroic ethics.

In 1933 Hauer’s movement received considerable support from many prominent Germans who were already or soon became Nazi Party members. But his ambition to become officially recognized as the ideological promoter of the Party was rebuffed. Hitler’s attitude towards religion was always politically calculated. So long as the majority of Germans remained attached to one or other of the churches, Hitler refused to endorse alternative world-views, or even the ideas promoted by his close associate, Alfred Rosenberg. Unofficially, however, it is clear that Hauer’s movement attracted wide publicity. Poewe suggests an audience of at least twelve million people. Lower-ranking Nazis helped to get him organized on the local level with rallies to promote the Deutsche Glaube, and he gained support from sections of the SS, SA and the Hitler Youth, But it is now impossible to calculate the total number of adherents, since accurate membership records are lacking.

By the end of the 1930s, Hauer’s activities were to be increasingly side-lined by the Nazi authorities. Nevertheless Poewe argues that they were an important component of the conservative revolution which sustained the fascist movement throughout Europe.
The new paganism came to be a significant part of a religious populism. combined with a metapolitical elitism, philosophical vitalism and dreams of national renewal. Its negative effects should not be underestimated.

Indeed Poewe claims its influence is still alive today in Europe’s New Right, long after the Nazi phenomenon was destroyed, based on a continuity of ideas in New Right and New Age publications. Rejection of Christianity paves the way for the recovery of neo-paganism. In support of this argument she quotes from the writings of a few little-known followers of the Nietzschean tradition. She seeks to point out the continuing danger of such anti-democratic, anti-liberal phenomena, and warns today’s readers not to repeat the mistake of the 1920s in downplaying or ignoring the baneful influence of such forces.
Poewe’s study includes helpful notes and an excellently comprehensive bibliography.
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1b) Irmfried Garbe, Theologie zwischen den Weltkriegen. Hermann Wolfgang Beyer (1898-1942). (Greifswalder Theologische Forschungen, 9). Pp.747 incl.colour frontispiece + 38 figs. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. £68.70.
(This review appeared in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, January 2006)

Garbe’s biography of the church historian and theologian, Hermann Wolfgang Beyer, is witness to a growing interest today amongst historians in churchmen who saw Hitler and National Socialism as the way forward out of a lost war and postwar national humiliation. It is a new prosopography which serves to balance a primary postwar interest, culminating in Bethge’s 1970 biography of Bonhoeffer, in the Protestant and Catholic minority which opposed National Socialism. This biography is a goldmine of information, packed with telling photos of interwar Protestant nationalistic theologians, their networks and their ephemeral but obviously very persuasive popular penny theology. Beyer, a lecturer briefly in Gottingen (1925-6), was heavily influenced by Hirsch’s nationalist mission temper, and by Kittel and his erasure of Jewish parallels in his controversial Dictionary of the New Testament to which Beyer contributed several articles. As professor at Greifswald (1926-36) and Leipzig (1936-40), he thus soon fell in line, given his active German nationalist mission in school RE textbooks and student politics (his chief book was a history of the Gustavus Adolphus Association, published in 1932), with the German Christians. Though he joined the Nazi Party and Nazi Teachers’ Union first in 1937, he would have done so already in 1933 had it been possible then. Joining the SA, it seems, was his ‘contribution’ to the Lutheran anniversary in November 1933. He was an adviser to Ludwig Muller, asserting the need for strong links with the Nazi Party, and briefly ‘Church Minister’ from December 1933 to February 1934. Board membership of the Evangelischer Bund in 1930 and editorship of Deutsche Theologie (1934-7) were seen as means to assert the ‘pure’ quality of German Lutheranism and to combat an ascendant postwar Roman Catholicism and Bolshevik atheism. But, as one student noted in June 1935, there was something funny about such teaching which began and ended with ‘Heil Hitler’ (storm of applause), lectures on Luther and entelechy in Creation. And yet, Hauer’s German Faith Movement proved too much for Beyer, as did the realisation (too late as Leipzig’s dean of theology) that Protestant theology faculties were ‘unwanted’ by the party leadership. Leipzig’s was officially closed on 18 January 1940. Beyer joined, voluntarily, the Wehrmacht as a military chaplain. He was killed in action on the Don front on Christmas Day 1942, thereby making a reality of the ‘sacrifical death’ which he had learned as a frontline soldier (after 1916) and had preached in a university sermon on Remembrance Sunday 1931. If the reader can bear the detail and the apologetic tone, this is a book well worth reading.
Nicholas Hope, Scotland

1c) John F.Pollard, Money and the Rise of the Modern Papacy: Financing the Vatican, 1850-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2005. 265 pp. ISBN 0 521 81204 6

The Vatican has long had a history of secrecy about its affairs. Its policies and operations are shrouded in obscurity, its archives open only for periods long past. At the same time, the character and activities of successive popes have attracted world-wide attention. The result is that journalists and commentators are often obliged to engage in unverifiable speculation about the Papal policies, especially in times of crisis, such as the world wars.

One aspect where both secrecy and speculation have been notably prevalent concerns the Vatican’s financial dealings. In John Pollard’s view, the Vatican has been, until relatively recently, obsessively secretive about its money, leading to a continuing series of inaccurate and ill-informed reportage. Pollard, who has already established his scholarly reputation with an excellent biography of Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922), now seeks to give an account of the financial affairs of the Vatican over the period 1850 to 1950, a century during which, he claims, the modern Papacy emerged.

Before 1870, the Pope owned and ruled over a large portion of central Italy, mainly rural estates from which he derived his revenues. But with the military campaigns of the Italian nationalists under the House of Savoy, their defeat of Papal forces, and the unification of the whole peninsular in 1870, the Papacy was reduced to a small enclave of 108 acres on the edge of Rome. The Vatican was forced to alter its whole operation. The resulting financial changes, Pollard rightly sees, had a powerful effect on the Papacy’s subsequent institutional development. In essence this was the period of the substitution of spiritual for temporal power, with strongly centralizing tendencies for Roman control, reaching its apogee, Pollard suggests, in 1950 at the height of Pius XII’s reign, in a display of Christian triumphalism. He therefore concludes his study at that date.

Pollard is concerned not only to describe how the Vatican financed itself, gained its revenues and controlled its expenditures. He also seeks to examine how participation in the capitalist investment markets affected the development of the institution of the Papacy, particularly its relations with its two principal financial foci, Italy and the United States. Wider still, he asks how successive Popes deliberated about the relationship, both on the theoretical and practical levels, between Catholicism and capitalism. While he has been handicapped by the continuing closure of many of the Vatican’s own records, he has made extremely good use of several valuable, hitherto unused sources, such as the papers of the principal financial advisor to Popes Pius XI and XII, Bernadino Nogara. Thanks to his assiduous sleuth works, he is able to provide a convincing picture of the Vatican’s financial operations, which will dispel many of the legends spread by earlier willfully-biased observers.

Before 1870, the Papal funds came mainly from rural rents and properties. But the combination of narrow ecclesiastical inefficiency, political instability and unwillingness to adopt any modern fiscal methods had seriously weakened the Papal treasury. Loans from Jews were frequent. But opposing Italian unification was very costly. Only the revival of the mediaeval Peter’s Pence drew in revenues from Catholics around the world. This had the extra advantage of establishing a material bond between the ordinary Catholic and the head of the Church, who had earlier been a remote, unknown figure. It also opened the way for a progressive universalization and democratization of financing the Papal operations.

Despite losing most of his territorial possessions, the Pope still had, and has, to maintain a splendid (and costly) Court, keep up numerous ancient buildings, organize colourful ceremonies, pay for a large international bureaucracy, and support innumerable charities. Revenues from Peter’s Pence and pilgrimages to Rome were increasingly supplemented by shrewd investments in commercial enterprises. Relations with the government of Italy remained contentious for sixty years until a new era began in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty signed by Mussolini. But not all investments were wise. Pope Leo XIII got badly burnt in the Rome building boom of the 1890s.

Pollard skillfully interweaves his account of the Papal fortunes with descriptions of other factors involved, such as the characters of the Popes, the successes and failures of their advisors, the external and often hostile political developments, and the impact of the world wars of this period. But from 1929 the Italian Government’s money helped matters greatly. And the appointment of Nogara as the Pope’s most influential advisor in the 1930s was a successful move to stabilize and internationalize the Vatican’s situation.

Pollard is more cautious in his assessment of how far these financial dealings affected the conduct of the Papacy’s spiritual mission. On the one hand, he dismisses the wild accusation that the silence of Pope Pius XII over the Nazi atrocities of the Holocaust was caused by his desire to protect the Vatican’s investments under German control. On the other, he does demonstrate how closely the Vatican’s financial operations were linked to the industrial-capitalist base of Italy’s economy. It is still a matter of conjecture to what extent the Papacy’s vigorous involvement in the Italian elections of 1948 was prompted by its apprehensions lest a Communist victory would lead to financial disaster.

There is also evidence of contradictory policies being pursued. At the same time as Nogara was taking very aggressive measures, on the best capitalist lines, to enhance the Vatican’s holdings, his superior Pope Pius XI was issuing the most notable Encyclical of his reign, Quadragesimo Anno, dated 1931, which contained a strong condemnation of monopoly capitalism, with its pernicious connections to faceless multi-national corporations.

In fact, Pollard suggests, this situation was caused by the left hand not knowing what the right was doing. Certainly the legacy of earlier chaotic budgetting and accounting procedures, the habit of individual Popes keeping a reservoir in their desk drawers, the endemic bias against Jewish or Protestant practices, and the general climate of reaction engendered in Rome, all seriously affected the acceptance of more modern investment operations. It is only in recent decades that the Vatican has adopted a fully capitalist climate and has benefited, along with Italy, from the stabilization and development of a flourishing economy.
Pollard rightly points out that there still remains a tension between the management of the Vatican’s finances and the Church’s social and moral teachings. Successive Popes have sought to avert critical publicity on this score. Pope Paul VI donated his papal tiara to the poor. Pope John Paul II repeatedly indicated his empathy for the victims of war and oppression. But essentially the Vatican remains tied to the capitalist and investment systems.

In the last fifty years, the Roman Catholic Church has undergone vast and significant changes. The Papacy has become internationalized, the Popes are no longer automatically Italians. Its prestige is arguably higher and more influential than ever before. Its missions and charitable works are world-wide in scope. The financial basis for all these developments was laid down during the period covered in this book. We can therefore be thankful to John Pollard for describing the processes by which these achievements were established and secured.
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1d) Jeffrey Cox, Imperial Fault Lines. Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818-1940, Stanford, California University Press 2002 357 pp. ISBN 0-8047-4318-5

In recent years the historiography of Christian missions has been evolving rapidly and fruitfully. There are still a few authors writing in the heroic mood, describing western agency and non-western response. And there are still many church archives waiting to be usefully exploited for this purpose. But more notably, there is now a growing literature from “the other side”, that is describing or analyzing the points of view of the recipients of western and Christian endeavours. There is an equally interesting scholarship emerging, largely influenced by Professor Andrew Porter at the Imperial and Commonwealth Seminar in London, which asks wider questions about the place of missions in the history of empires, particularly of course the British.

Jeffrey Cox’s study of the intersection of Christianity and colonial power in India takes the title “Imperial Fault Lines” in part to indicate the ambivalence he traces in the minds of both missionaries and imperial rulers. Possibly he himself feels the same, as he shows how the historiography of Christians in India have passed through various ambiguous phases. On the one hand, “triumphalist” historians of the Raj mostly marginalized the missions, reflecting the official disdain widely held by the Indian Civil Service and its British masters. On the other hand, anti-imperialist historians have largely dismissed the missionaries as no more than willing agents of colonial rule over the local inhabitants, imposing their beliefs from a position of assumed superiority. Cox now seeks to pursue a more nuanced approach by exploring the inherent conflicts between the universalist Christian values of the missions, and the political imperialist setting in which they had to operate. He also seeks to describe the major impact on Indian society of Christian missionary institutions, a topic long neglected or disparaged. And he wants to rectify the long-held silence about women missionaries, whose contributions were so often ignored by their male colleagues, but who obviously shared in ambivalent relations with the exploitative imperial presence.

The Punjab makes a highly interesting setting. From 1818 onwards the Punjab presented a particular religious challenge and opportunity. In an era of geo-religious triumphalism, this was to be the base for the control and conversion of Asia. Yet the interests of the British missionaries, let alone those of their American partners, were not synonymous with those of the Government of India. Indeed the latter’s hostility to missions and missionaries was proverbial. The missionaries‚ initial aim was to build up a local church, which would survive or transcend the imperial presence and the Raj. For instance, the leading nineteenth-century administrator of the Church Missionary Society, Henry Venn, called for the creation of self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating Christian communities, after which the foreign missionaries could move on to new fields of endeavour. But the British imperial establishment thought more in terms of building permanent institutions to inculcate devotion to British civilization, and therefore welcomed British bishops presiding over grand cathedrals as visible embodiments of the imperial dream. Cox analyses these contradictions and rival pressures with a skillful use of his sources.

In Cox’s view, the institutions built by the missionaries were both an incentive and a trap. Their impact was much more effective than their preaching. The latter gained few converts; but the former, especially the schools and hospitals, affected wide segments of the non-Christian population. The missions could indulge in the belief that sooner or later their Christian influence would permeate the whole society, just as the British rulers expected that British education would permeate and improve India and replace the backward civilizations of the past. So the missionary institutions were often subsidized by government grants, hence the ambivalence. When if fact the mission-trained cadres neither became converts, nor admirers of the Raj, but supported the anti-foreign nationalist movement, both sponsors were embarrassed. So too, over the years, the contradictions became more and more apparent between the goal of a self-governing indigenous church and the heavy institutional strategy of the foreign missions. The gap between the Europeans‚ standard of living, even of the lowly paid missionaries, and that of their indigenous parishioners, was a constant challenge, and only compounded the difficulty of establishing real inter-racial friendships. It was a form of genteel imperialism, however well intentioned, which inevitably caused resentment. Indian Christians were naturally unreceptive to missionary claims about their “sacrifices” in coming to India. On the other side, there was to be continuing ambivalence, to say the least, about the converts‚ motives for adopting Christianity. Imperial-indigenous relations were always affected, and often poisoned, by considerations of race. In short, paternalism was not enough.

The emergence of a multiracial Christianity in India was therefore beset with difficulties. Paradoxically, and often contrary to the mission boards‚ expectations, there were places in the Punjab where the Christian community expanded rapidly, but from the bottom upwards. The largest group numerically came from the so-called untouchable classes. The eagerness of these illiterates to convert caused many problems for the missionaries, not least because of the impact on their other converts, and the impossibility of overcoming the existing caste prejudices solely by proclaiming that Jesus loved everyone equally. Cox suggests that the search for dignity, rather than the desire for wealth, or liberation from social stigmas, let alone theological factors, was a principal cause for their conversion. But the elitism of some missionaries – particularly Anglicans – could hardly conceive of these people as welcome converts. Yet too strict a control only fostered the tendency to independent forms of hybrid Christianity, whereby the local people adopted only those aspects of the Gospel and faith which suited them. Could they be called Christians? Or were they to be evicted, even if willing to worship? Too often the authoritarian missionaries sought to impose a social and moral order on these communities, and then became disillusioned when their precepts were not heeded. Mission boards were constantly divided as to how many resources should be devoted to pastoral care of these untouchables.

Such a diversion might harm the more glamorous work of schools and hospitals catering for higher classes. In the eyes of some,only institutional attendance and theological knowledge counted for real and deserving Christians. But in Cox’s view, the fullest expression of indigenous Punjabi Christianity was to be found in the hymn-singing and genuine piety of the rural communities.

Cox’s survey of the missionaries‚ contributions in the medical and educational fields, especially of the women, pays tribute to the remarkable successes of the highly-trained professionals who ran these institutions. Thanks to their efforts, such institutions as the Christian Medical College for Women in Ludhiana, or Forman Christian College in Lahore, achieved a high reputation, even if not always sufficiently acknowledged. By the 1940s, mission hospitals provide the bulk of training of nurses throughout all India. Their schools carried off the prizes, outclassing most of the government secular counterparts. But the very fact of such rivalry was evidence of how far they had been drawn into the network of imperial nation-building. Their original task of evangelism was subordinated to higher needs of skilled institutional management. As these institutions grew, the percentage of Christian pupils or patients grew ever smaller. Equally inevitably. the personal contact with Indians became attenuated. Professionalism and racial differences were subtly reinforcing. Many missionaries continued to believe that these divergent goals could be reconciled. But the results more often than not showed the incompatibility of such aims.

The continued expansion of these European-derived institutions from 1880 to 1930 necessitated the hiring of more Europeans. By the 1930s there were over 600 foreign missionaries in the Punjab alone. But the effect was too often to encourage a sense of elitism (and snobbery) and to widen the gap with the ill-educated Christians in the local church. Paradoxically, with the growth of the Indian nationalist movement, some of its leaders came from these mission schools. To many of these men, Christianity was at best irrelevant to India, or an offensive imperialist intrusion at worst. The missionaries‚ hopes of shaping the course of Indian history in a Christian direction proved illusory.

But equally, the indigenous church, so often composed of men and women from stigmatized communities, rarely gained enough well-educated or well-heeled members to become self-supporting and self-governing. Its sense of identity was always problematic. And when the foreign missions retreated after 1947, the Indian churches found themselves saddled with large and expensive institutions they could not maintain. Yet the Punjab local churches, though poverty-stricken and illiterate, had sufficient stability to survive the political crises and mass slaughter of the 1940s. The legacy of the missions. however, remains ambivalent. The verdict of history on this episode in the long saga of East-West relations still remains to be written. But we can be grateful to Jeffrey Cox for his balanced assessment of the successes and failures of this example of the interaction between Christianity and colonial power.
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2) Professor Gallo’s response to the review of his book in the March Newsletter:

Dear Professor Conway:

I read your review and hope that in the next issue you can print a few corrections.

1. Five of the essays written by me have never been published. The review indicated otherwise.
2. While two of Rychlaks essays have material used earlier as far as I know they have never been published in this form before.
3. I am a political scientist and historian. My expertise is not only in foreign policy but American Politics. My previous work reflects both fields; moreover nearly 80% of my publications are on Italian themes.
4. While this latest book deals exclusively with the Pius debate my two previous books, For Love And Country and Enemies both in part deal with the issues raised in the Pius War… particularly the former title.

Comment; I don’t agree that this latest group of revisionists has been completely corraled. Perhaps this might be true in a very limited circle of scholars like yourself. In my teaching both in the US and Italy…my extensive encounters with a broad spectrum of the public, friends etc show that this is not the case. I find the books of Goldhagen & Co. still in libraries, bookstores, sold on the internet on both sides of the Atlantic. The internet contains a near universal reflections of the revisionist view. My discussions with the aforementioned underscore this point.

Finally, My encounter with publishers of my volume on the Italian resistance points to my overall point of view. One chapter only addresses Pius XII and in parts elewhere. A near universal objection was to the presence of this one chapter. In short if I had written from the revisionist point of view this would not have been the red flag. My experience is not only with general trade but academic publishers as well. Let me cite just one example…a prestigious University press received positive recommendations for the publication of For Love and Country. The director wrote that alas their marketing department would find this a hard sell since the media and the climate would not permit. This from an academic press.

I do agree that a full biography of Pius is needed..that is why I included Bottom’s essay.

Best regards, Patrick Gallo

Vancouver is now enjoying a wonderul season when all the cherry trees are blossoming. The streets and parks are filled with colour and the spring flowers are providing us with a proof of God’s blessings. May I hope that you, my readers, in so many different parts of the world, will also find occasion at this time to be thankful for the gifts of a munificent nature.

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

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Burkard, Häresie und Mythus
b) Inter Arma Caritas: Vatican service for prisoners-of-war, 1939-1947.
c) Gallo, Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Revisionists
d) Zeitgeschichtliche Katholizismusforschung

2) Journal articles:

a) Church and State in the Balkans

1a) D. Burkard, Häresie und Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts. Rosenbergs nationalsozialistische Weltanschauung vor dem Tribunal der Römischen Inquisition. (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoningh 2005), 416 pp. ISBN 3-506-77673-8

The recent partial opening of the Vatican archives for the period up to 1939 has now provided scholars with an opportunity to gain a more informed and nuanced understanding of the Roman Catholic Church’s policies and attitudes towards National Socialism in its first years of power in Germany. As is well known, extensive controversy, often virulent and ill-informed, has arisen over the alleged failure of the Catholic authorities to condemn the Nazi regime and its flagrant crimes against humanity. For more than forty years now, this debate has raged, but in the absence of the principal body of source material, it has too often been an unseemly and unscholarly activity. But with the appearance of Gerhard Besier’s summary account of the political developments for the period 1933-1939, Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland (Munich: Deutsche-Verlags Anstalt 2004) and now Dominik Burkard’s analysis of the activities of the Holy Office, formerly known as the Inquisition, we are now much better informed as to the parameters within which this debate should take place.

Burkard rightly points out that all the previous literature focused on the political relations between the Nazi state and the Catholic Church. The signing of the Reich Concordat in July 1933 was certainly a highly political act, and was designed to secure a favourable relationship with Hitler’s new regime. But, as is now well known, the Nazis had no desire to implement the spirit of this accord. And the area of least agreement was the ideological sphere, where for several years a heated exchange of books, pamphlets and propaganda had already indicated a wide and seemingly unbridgeable gulf. It is just this area of controversy and the policies pursued by the Vatican’s Holy Office in regard to Nazi publications which Burkard now investigates, with precision and careful scrutiny of the available archival sources. His over-all intention is to seek to refute the sensationalist charges of “collaboration” between the Vatican and the Nazi propagandists, especially on such matters as antisemitism. On the other hand, he draws attention to the striking ambivalence of some of the Roman officials, and of some of the clergy in Germany and outside.

Burkard’s prime focus is on how the Vatican’s Holy Office dealt with Alfred Rosenberg’s major publication, The Myth of the 20th Century. As editor of the chief Nazi newspaper, Der Völkischer Beobachter, and as one of Hitler’s inner circle, Rosenberg undoubtedly enjoyed a considerable standing in the Party’s ranks. But his book, despite enormous printing runs, was never officially approved, and Hitler could even dismiss it as a private work. The church authorities, however, regarded it as a central expression of the Nazi movement’s ideology and ethic, with its attendant virulent anti-Christian attitude – and in February 1934 placed it on the Index of forbidden books.

Burkard’s first task is to elucidate the stages which led to this provocative step. One theory is that the first attempt to have Rosenberg’s book banned came in 1931 from the Jesuits in Holland, who recognized early on that its onslaughts on the Church and its sweeping praise for racist and nationalist ideas were incompatible with Christian doctrine. But in 1933 – the year of illusions – the Curia, led by Cardinal Pacelli, still hoped that the Concordat would achieve a modus vivendi, when such authors as Rosenberg would be relegated to the sidelines, and a new climate of co-operation would prevail. But this did not happen. By the end of 1933, the continuation of anti-clerical outbursts and anti-Catholic agitation within the ranks of the Nazi Party, led to pressure on the Vatican to take more open measures of protest. As Secretary of State, Pacelli was certainly considering formal diplomatic steps, such as the publication of a “White Book”, outlining the Nazi regime’s breaches of the newly-signed Concordat. But instead, it is suggested, the less incendiary step was agreed upon, to place The Myth, and a similar booklet by another Nazi propagandist, Ernst Bergmann, The German National Church, on the list of banned books.

An alternative theory is that the indexing of these books was a deliberate tactic of the Holy Office to drive a wedge between the two factions in the Nazi Party – as they perceived them: the one, set on attacking the Christian churches root and branch, in favour of an exaggerated German religious nationalism, and calling for a new German man, no longer shackled by Judeo-Christian-Roman superstitions; or secondly, those favouring a Nazi revival based solely on political renewal, but maintaining the spiritual and moral bases of the past, through support of existing church structures. By isolating Rosenberg and his ideas, and by dismissing his book as a “private work”, the Holy Office hoped to uphold the kind of Christian nationalism which Hitler himself allegedly supported This was the line supposedly followed by the prominent German Catholic and former Reich Chancellor, Franz von Papen, whose influence however drastically waned during 1933-4. It was also adopted in numerous articles in the Jesuits‚ main publication, Civilta Cattolica. By this means the heretical errors of Rosenberg’s racist ideology could be castigated even while the hope for a political collaboration based on the Concordat could be still maintained.

This was exactly the stance taken by a consultant of the Holy Office, Bishop Alois Hudal, who was responsible for the assessment which led to Rosenberg’s book being condemned in February 1934. Hudal has long had an extremely debatable reputation, and for this reason is little known among English-speaking observers of the Vatican scene. Burkard’s researches into Hudal’s surviving papers are therefore helpful. Born an Austrian, he became in 1923 the Rector of the Anima, the college in Rome for German-speaking students, and later a consultant of the Holy Office. He was an active publicist, and had already produced several short works dealing with the Church’s involvement in current political debates. So it was only logical that he should have been assigned the task of assessing the publications of prominent Nazis, such as Rosenberg and Bergmann. Burkard makes clear that Hudal consistently attacked the excesses of the Blood and Soil ideologues, the anti-Christian bases of Germanic religions, and the Nazi contempt for all aspects of the Jewish people and its history. But at the same time, he viewed sympathetically the Nazi plans for rebuilding German society, and openly expressed his opinion that Catholicism could well co-exist with an acceptable form of National Socialism.

It was on this basis, Burkard suggests, that Hudal’s advice to ban Rosenberg’s Myth was adopted by the Holy Office, and confirmed by the Pope himself. Rosenberg was, of course, all the more convinced of the iniquity of the clerical clique in the Vatican, its anti-German myopia, and the blindness and hypocrisy of the Catholic hierarchy. In the following years he became even more actively involved in his propaganda campaign against the church, and aroused open hostility from both Catholics and Protestants by his violent attacks on their faiths. But Hitler never publicly endorsed such radicalism, and other leading Nazis like Goering and Goebbels were openly dismissive. Catholic spokesmen therefore felt free to express their opposition. They criticized Rosenberg in writing, even when they meant the whole Nazi regime. In reply, in 1935, Rosenberg issued another incendiary booklet An die Dunkelmänner unserer Zeit, which likewise was placed on the Index by the Holy Office. To the end of his days, Rosenberg saw the Vatican as Germany’s chief enemy.

Within the ranks of the German Catholics there were those who hoped that placing Rosenberg’s book on the Index would mark the beginning of a more general mobilization of Catholic opposition against Nazi extremism. But, in the event, this did not happen, even after the scandalous murder of leading Catholics during the so-called Röhm putsch. Political prudence was to dominate the relationship, and the Vatican constantly placed restraints on those who urged a more outspoken defiance. At the same time, these factors also led to restraints being placed on those, like Hudal, whose enthusiasm for the new regime was embarrassingly inappropriate.

To be sure, political factors also compelled the Nazis to a certain moderation. On the one hand, ardent champions of Rosenberg’s views sought to have them taught as mandatory texts in all schools and party indoctrination sessions. The Gestapo was apparently given orders in certain districts to confiscate any Catholic anti-Rosenberg publications as evidence of their authors‚ hostility towards the Nazi Party and state. But on the other hand, such wider events as the Saar plebiscite of 1935 and the Olympic Games of 1936 prompted a more cautious approach. Nevertheless the Nazi propagandists had free rein to disseminate their wares on a massive scale, while Catholic responses were limited in their outreach. As a result the Catholic faithful were confused. Their dilemma of how to resolve the competing loyalties between church and nation remained, and in fact only grew worse.

Despite all, Bishop Hudal continued to propagate his hoped-for reconciliation between the Church and a reformed National Socialism. Burkard makes good use of Hudal’s papers to expose clearly the illusory nature of such an attempt. Yet Hudal’s plea that the errors of Nazism should be exposed and condemned on a wider basis – in order to purge the movement of such faults – at first found a ready response at the Vatican’s highest level. Pope Pius XI himself took up the suggestion that a new Syllabus would be a more effective response than merely banning a heretical book. Such a statement, broadcast world-wide, should clearly outline the church’s teachings and warnings against the dangers of totalitarianism, radical racism and extreme nationalism. In fact, this plan was approved. But by the time it had been sifted by various committees within the Vatican bureaucracy more than two years had elapsed.

It was just at this juncture in 1936 that Hudal published a new book Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, seeking to build a more constructive relationship. The book appeared in Vienna with the approval of the Austrian cardinal, but again indulged in all sorts of wishful thinking. The response in the Vatican’s top circles was one of exasperation, coming as it did when wiser counsels were convinced that the Nazi policy was becoming more oppressive, and that therefore no further compromises with Nazism could be entertained. Hudal came to be regarded by his superiors as a naive, and possibly dangerous, individual. He was later to be relegated to the margins of the Vatican’s activities. Needless to say, his book received an equally cool reception from the Nazi authorities.

By late 1936, the Vatican believed it to be more opportune to issue a Papal Encyclical specifically and more critically dealing with the German situation. This eventually was proclaimed in March 1937 with the title Mit brennender Sorge. But it is notable that the text was prepared without the help of the Holy Office. The result was, however, extremely disappointing. German Catholics were subjected to a renewed bout of oppressive measures, and there was no sign that the Nazi authorities were willing to moderate their ideological stance or anti-clerical campaigns. Above all, the Encyclical did not serve to rally Catholics against the regime. Its failure undoubtedly led the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pacelli, soon to be Pope Pius XII, to distrust this kind of tactic in the on-going struggle to reserve the church’s autonomy in Germany. The fate of similarly planned Encyclical on the subject of racism, which was abandoned as soon as Pius XII was elected, proves this point.

Burkard’s lengthy analyses of these debates within the Vatican hierarchy are suggestive rather than definitive, since the conclusive documentation has still not been released. But he is correct in pointing out that, in view of the Nazis‚ incessant and noisy onslaughts, the tactic of placing a few books on the Index was absurd. In any case, the whole idea of trying to control the reading habits of the Catholic faithful was obsolete. And the Nazi propaganda campaigns‚ overwhelming advantage clearly showed how ineffective the Vatican’s strategy was in meeting the challenge of these modern myths and heresies.

On the other hand, it was Hudal’s achievement, Burkard suggests, that he saw the need for an on-going and vehement campaign against the ideological errors of Nazism, Fascism and other racist philosophies. But his efforts were to be sabotaged by Pacelli’s politicized calculations. Maintaining the church’s existence in a beleaguered country seemed to Pacelli to be a higher priority than strident denunciations of ideological heresies or political criminality. Burkard lays out the arguments on both sides, while showing a certain sympathy for Hudal’s position. Too often, he laments, the Vatican’s policies were determined by political rather than theological considerations – a position also adopted by the English writer on this topic, Peter Godman. But Hudal’s idealistic fantasies lacked credibility on either side. Pacelli’s sounder political sense prevailed.

Burkard’s account of these various conflicts within the Vatican bureaucracy led him to the clear conclusion that political factors not ideological affinity governed Papal attitudes towards the Nazi regime. Goldhagen’s accusations that the Curia’s officials were rabid antisemites supporting Hitler’s policies of racial elimination, are therefore totally erroneous. The silence of Pope Pius XII on the subject of Nazi crimes during the second world war was not due to antisemitism, but rather the product of his diplomatic training and his desire to act as an impartial peace maker between the warring sides The failure to speak out against the Nazi war-time atrocities was in fact in line with the failure to attack Nazi heresies in earlier years. But, as Burkard suggests, the question of how the Church can hope to stem the tide of ideological error with the limited resources at its disposal, still needs to be discussed.

1b) Inter Arma Caritas: Uffizio Informazioni Vaticano per i prigioneri di guerra instituito da Pio XII (1939-1947) Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano 2004, 2 vols. 1472 pp.

One of the services instituted by Pope Pius XII immediately after the outbreak of war in 1939 was an office where relatives could attempt to get in touch with prisoners-of-war, other missing persons, and later on refugees. This was modelled on a similar attempt made during the First World War, but in 1939 the scope was only barely recognized. Parallel to the Red Cross, this service was eventually to cover all theatres of the war, and to offer some contact points where messages could be exchanged in both directions. Since many of the participants in the war were Catholics, especially Italians, this service was seen as a particularly valuable pastoral office, and undoubtedly was of help to many families whose sons or fathers had disappeared without trace. But it also produced an enormous amount of paper, covering the fate of some 2 million prisoners.
Sixty years later, the Vatican Archives decided to make these papers available, and to publish a helpful catalogue or index. Since this Information Office was set up separately from the main Papal archives, this meant that the restrictions on the latter do not apply, and so the war-time documents can be released. The catalogue is in two massive volumes – almost all in Italian. Volume 1 includes, besides the Inventory of files, a helpful description of how the Office was established and maintained, and a lengthy historical essay by Fr. Sergio Pagano, outlining the circumstances – often frustrating and limiting – in which the Office sought to do its work. Volume 2 consists of documents, a selection of the over 10 million letters received, mostly reports sent to the Vatican from its nunciatures in the warring countries, along with lists of prisoners or missing persons, appeals for help or counsel, arranged chronologically. Unfortunately the replies are not necessarily provided, so it is unclear just what effective steps were taken.

This Prisoner-of-War/Missing Persons service is to be distinguished from the Pontifical Relief Commission, which provided actual material assistance to the needy in various countries, wherever the Papal representatives were allowed to function.
As a means of gauging the fate of prisoners-of-war in various different settings, – where they being held, or in hospital, or were deceased – these documents yield interesting material, even if they cannot be described as comprehensive or complete. Likewise the letters from home to the prisoners afford glimpses of war-time conditions. Even though the Vatican’s Information Office never achieved the status of the International Committee of the Red Cross, it may be credited with some amelioration of the conditions where the “host” country, such as Great Britain, recognized its value.

Any one considering using these archives in Rome will find these two volumes of help in beginning their search. But fluent Italian is mandatory.
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1c) ed. Patrick J. Gall, Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Revisionists: Essays Jefferson, North Carolina, USA: McFarland and Co. 2006 218 pp. US$ 39.95 paper

Two years ago, the American journalist, Joseph Bottom, published an essay entitled “The end of the Pius Wars”, which is reprinted here as the epilogue to this short collection of articles. He began: “The Pius War is over, more or less. There will still be a few additional volumes published here and there, another article or two from authors too slow off the mark to catch their moment”.

This seems entirely appropriate as a description of the book under review. Professor Patrick Gall is a political scientist at New York University, whose expertise so far has been in the field of American foreign policy. He is certainly a newcomer to the extensive debates about the policies of Pope Pus XII. But he has now rounded up contributions from several authors to supplement some chapters of his own. All these are reprints from earlier publications and are characterized by two attributes: they have all appeared before, and are inspired by the same strongly critical approach towards any writers, i.e. Revisionists, who have dared to attack the revered figure of Pus XII – the subject of the above-mentioned Pius Wars.

In fact, Professor Gall and his team appear as a posse of outriders, rushing around the outer reaches of the ranch in search of any miscreants (i.e. Revisionists), even though by now all these have long since been driven into the corral and suitably castigated. Sad to say, there is nothing new in this book at all. Professor Gall writes in a sprightly fashion, rehearses the by now well-known facts, cites with approval a number of my own contributions to this debate, but has not added any substantial evidence or new interpretation.

It has been a sad feature of the so-called Pius War that the so-called revisionists have waxed indignant over the so-called moral failures of the Pope, of the Vatican bureaucracy or of the Catholic Church at large. Equally lamentable is the sight of the Pope’s defenders waxing indignant at the sloppy scholarship, at the years of extended distortion or at the catalogue of errors to be found in the revisionists‚ books.

The fact is that no final judgment can possibly be made until the prime documentary source in the Vatican archive is open for scrutiny. No records for the reign of Pope Pius XII have so far been released to the public. So all these controversies are based on conjecture (for or against) rather than accurate scholarship. The same applies to Professor Gall’s essays. Bottom is quite correct to conclude his essay with the excellent observation:

“What we really need is a new biography of Pius XII during these years: a nonreactive account of his life and times, a book driven not by the reviewer’s instinct to answer charges but by the biographer’s impulse to tell an accurate story. Before that can be done well, the archives of Pius XII’s pontificate will have to be opened.”

This desirable goal would still seem to be several years off. So one-sided recapitulations, such as the articles in this book, cannot be regarded as definitive. They are really only the evidence of a strongly partisan stance, which will inevitably be outdated when at last the full documentation becomes available.
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1d) Karl-Joseph Hummel, ed., Zeitgeschichtliche Katholizismusforschung (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2004), 273 pp. ISBN: 3-506-71339-6 (This review appeared first in the Catholic Historical Review, October 2005)
This commemorative volume appropriately serves as the 100th addition in a
well-known series from the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, a German and
Catholic historical association founded in 1962 with the express goal of
researching the recent Catholic past. To scholars of German Catholicism,
this association will be instantly familiar as the home of the so-called
“Blaue Reihe,” (blue series), a standard and invaluable series on German and
Catholic history, not just for the 20th century but for the 18th and 19th
centuries as well.

This particular volume emerged out of a conference held at the Katholische
Akademie in Bavaria in May, 2003, in part, to commemorate the 75 birthday of
Rudolf Morsey and the 80th birthday of Konrad Repgen, two of the most
prominent and founding members of this renowned historical association. Like
a similar conference held in 1987, this conference was intended to take
stock of the existing state of research on Catholicism. This state of the
field, so to speak, thus features more than one dozen contributions from
leading researchers, junior and senior, in the areas of German Catholicism,
European Catholicism, and in one case, German Protestantism. This
distinguished list includes Urs Altermatt, Wolfgang Altgeld, Magnus
Brechtken, Wilhelm Damberg, Michael Ebertz, Martin Greschat, Michael
Hochgeschwender, Hans Günter Hockerts, Ulrich von Hehl, Karl-Joseph Hummel,
Christoph Kösters, Antonius Liedhegener, Christoph Kösters and Wolfgang
Tischner. The close of the volume provides a highly useful compendium of
scholars in the field, including their institutional affiliations and year
of birth.

True to the aim of the conference, some chapters dish out commentaries on
recent historical controversies. Michael Hochgeschwender’s somewhat abstruse
chapter on Catholicism and anti-Semitism nonetheless provides a compelling
overview of the recent debates that prominently featured Olaf Blaschke and
Urs Altermatt. Thomas Brechenmacher’s plea for a broader perspective on the
question of Pius XII and the Second World War, summarizes the state of the
source material, secondary literature and avenues for future research, and
concludes by denouncing Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s recent work as libelous.
Wilhelm Damberg discusses the research examining the relationship between
Catholicism and the pluralized society and politics of the Federal Republic.
Other contributions provide a brief historical sketch of the Kommission für
Zeitgeschichte. Although it was most concerned in its early years with
sketching the relationship between Roman Catholicism and the fate of the
Weimar republic, the impulses for this historical association actually
predated Rolf Hochhuth’s incendiary play, “The Deputy,” and Ernst-Wolfgang
Böckenforde’s provocative article about German Catholicism in 1933 from the
liberal Catholic journal, Hochland in 1960/61. Instead, even in the 1950s,
some voices were calling for a scholarly examination of the recent past,
including most notably, the young Rudolf Morsey. Though the Kommission dealt
almost exclusively with the years of the National Socialism in the 1960s and
1970s, by the 1980s and 1990s, scholars of German Catholicism began to turn
their attention to approaches pioneered in social history and analyze the
so-called “Catholic milieu” in the 19th and 20th centuries. The field of
inquiry has since broadened to examined the history of the Federal Republic,
and after 1989/90, the role of Catholicism in the former DDR.

Not all of the contributors and panelists in the conference were in complete
agreement on the state of the profession. For Wolfgang Tischner, Catholic
research stood in danger of being limited by insularity, by the relatively
small number of mostly Catholic practitioners. For Urs Altermatt, in
contrast, Catholic research, especially in other nations such as France,
found easy connections to “profane” history, in part, because Catholic
religiosity itself was transformed in an increasingly pluralistic world.
Still, one receives the impression that the Kommission has maintained a
certain distance and reserve toward the newer approaches that have gained
favor in the secular historical world – cultural history, gender history,
the history of memory, to name but the most widespread of these newer
methodologies.

Yet throughout many parts of this collection, sometimes explicitly,
elsewhere implicitly, lies the complaint that the massive historical
research sponsored by or published in the blue series of the Kommission has
failed to reach not just the larger, secular historical profession but the
broader public. The more sensational claims made by men as Rolf Hochhuth,
Ernst Klee, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen or John Cornwell consistently manage to
find a strong outlet in the news media, even though scholars, many
associated with the Kommission, have produced works which, in their eyes,
have definitively refuted their claims. Such allegations have, for instance,
accused the popes of fostering anti-semitism and the church of collaborating
with the Nazis. This underscores the central (and paradoxical) dilemmas
facing the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte and like-minded scholars in other
nations who seek both to bring “the truth to light” – to quote Konrad Repgen
from the year 1962 – and, in many cases, to defend the church against
unwarranted and even slanderous attacks. As the product of this intersection
of an objective, “wissenschaftlich” historical methodology and confessional
identity, dozens of outstanding 500 to 800 page scholarly monographs have
all too often proven to be no match against popular historical accounts with
extensive exposure through television, talk shows, trade presses and radio.
It might often seem that in winning the battles, the Kommission has yet to
win the war.

Mark Ruff, St Louis University.

2a) A Ilic, On the road towards religious pluralism? Church and State in Serbia; P.Petkoff, Church-State relations in Bulgaria in Religion, State and Society, Vol. 33, no 4, December 2005, p. 265-314.

These two articles describe comprehensively the present situation affecting the place of the church in Serbia and Bulgaria. Despite having a common border, these two societies have had divergent political and ecclesiastical histories. These authors explore the current pressures both internal and external which are affecting these communities in the aftermath of a turbulent century.

With best wishes
John S.Conway

Dear Friends,

Instead I now send you my own tribute to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which will be the text of my presentation on Saturday 18th. There is no registration fee, and refreshments will be served. You are all cordially invited to attend.
John Conway

Bonhoeffer’s Last Writings from Prison

On December 19th 1944, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his bleak underground prison in the cellars of the Gestapo headquarters in central Berlin, began to write a Christmas letter to his fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer. In it he included a poem to be shared with his parents called By the Powers of Good, “which has been running through my head in the last few days”. It was to be his final greeting. The last verse goes as follows:

While all the powers of good protect us
Boldly we’ll face the future, come what may.
At even and at morn God will befriend us
And never fails to greet us each new day!

This poem has since become a popular and well-loved hymn in many countries, and is included in the latest compilation of the Anglican Church of Canada, Common Praise, no 265. But, of course, in this form, it cannot reproduce the desperate situation in which it was composed. My purpose today is to describe the context in which this and Bonhoeffer’s other remarkable final poems and papers were written, in order to shed light on the theological and personal pilgrimage of this intrepid witness, who at any minute could be faced with the imminence of his own trial and execution

The sixth Christmas season of the war was a terrifying time of impending overwhelming disaster. In the circumstances, the seven short verses of this poem expressing Bonhoeffer’s affirmation of God’s enduring and comforting presence have to be seen not as just a conventional expression of escapist pietism, but, rather, a most moving and timely confession of faith. It begins:

The powers of good surround us in wonder,
Comforted and kept beyond all fear,
So I will live with you in these days
And go with you to meet the coming year.

The old year still fills our hearts with terror.
We carry still the burden of these evil days.
O Lord, give our chastened souls your healing
For which you have so gracefully created us.

It was a time of impending overwhelming disaster for the prisoner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He had already been imprisoned for nineteen months, mainly in Cell 92 of Tegel prison on the outskirts of Berlin. He had been arrested in April 1943 on suspicion of being involved in smuggling Jewish refugees to Switzerland. The investigations had dragged on without resolution for a year and a half. But then in October 1944 he had been transferred to the far more ominous Interrogation Centre of the Gestapo’s main headquarters in downtown Berlin. He now faced the even more serious charges of abetting the conspiracy which had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the Führer, Adolf Hitler, a few months earlier. He would likely be arraigned before the Chief Justice of the People’s Court, Roland Freisler, whose vindictiveness had already sentenced thousands to death for treason against the Volk, and was to do the same to Dietrich’s brother, Klaus. In the meantime the Gestapo was relentlessly trying to entrap him into incriminating confessions about his friends and relatives. What kind of a faith could withstand such ruthless pressures and still witness to God’s powers of goodness?

It was a time of impending overwhelming disaster for Maria.

She was only twenty. She had been brought up on her family’s scenic rural estate in Pomerania, where she could ride her horses through the woods and fields. But the 1941 campaign of the German army against the Soviet enemy brought this idyll to an end. Within a year her adored father and her elder brother Max had been killed on the eastern front. She was sent to help her grandmother on another estate, and there met Pastor Bonhoeffer, who was nearly twice her age. Their relationship was very formal, and for a long time she addressed him as “Herr Pastor”. But when her mother sensed that something might develop, she forbade them to meet for a year. Maria was far too young. But even before this edict could take place, Dietrich was arrested miles away in Berlin. Her fiancé a traitor to his country? Opposed to the cause for which her father and brother had died? As Dietrich realized, his fate made her situation “bewildering, terrible, unimaginable”.

It was a time of impending overwhelming disaster for the church. Ever since 1933, Bonhoeffer had seen church leaders betray the church’s traditional doctrines in order to curry favour with “the winds of change”. Bishops had used their episcopal authority to discipline pastors who stood up uncompromisingly for Christian orthodoxy. Theologians had argued that the church must regain its popularity by moving with the times, and shedding all kinds of mediaeval morality and conventions. Only the Confessing Church minority stood firm. But, as Bonhoeffer knew, opposing such heresies, which distorted or abandoned the Gospel for the sake of current political correctness, was going to be a costly discipleship. Too many church members failed to realize that the Nazi creed was based on hatred and violence. In 1937, the leader of the Confessing Church, Martin Niemöller, was arrested and later sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. All over the country, Confessing Church pastors and congregations were being harassed and intimidated because they stood fast to their principles. They were chiefly opposed to the attempts to Nazify the church and to compel it to accept racist antisemitic ideas. Bonhoeffer was appalled when bishops called for Christian pastors of Jewish origin to be banished from their parishes, or the laity relegated to separate services, at the very time when these men and women needed sympathy and comfort to overcome their isolation. He condemned the failure of the church to stand in solidarity with these victims of hatred and discrimination. He was immensely shocked when the churches instead gave their support to the Nazi wars of conquest and destruction. Above all, it was the wanton violence against the Jews, witnessed in silence by the majority of church members, which convinced him that he must join those who wanted to use force to overthrow such an evil regime. After war broke out, Bonhoeffer was virtually alone in praying for Germany’s defeat. The bitter legacy of the churches‚ capitulation was to last for many years.

It was a time of impending overwhelming disaster for the city. From the end of 1943, British bombers took advantage of the long dark nights to launch their almost incessant attacks on one part of Berlin or another. Night after night, the city reverberated with the noise of droning airplanes, the howling of air-raid sirens, the sharp cracking explosions of anti-aircraft guns, the frenetic flickering of the searchlights, the menacing whine of bombs being dropped, the sickening thud of their impact on tenements, offices and houses, the pervasive irremovable dust, smoke and ash drifting across the ever increasing ruins. Whole streets disappeared under piles of cascading rubble. The smell of burning pervaded everywhere. Power was disrupted. Water lines spewed aimlessly for hours on end. By Christmas it was very cold and heating supplies had virtually vanished. The mood of the people was traumatized, gray and exhausted. The unpredictability of not knowing when or where the next bomb would fall took a terrible toll.

And yet, Bonhoeffer could still write:

Advent is a time especially dear to me. Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent; one waits, hopes, does this, that or the other, but the door is shut and can only be opened from the outside.

As we now recognize, Bonhoeffer’s period of imprisonment proved to be a source of theological discovery and reflection. His letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, secretly smuggled out of the prison by a friendly warder, gave him an opportunity to explore, albeit in an unfinished form, some of the radical, even provocative ideas, prompted by his experiences and disillusionments of the previous ten years living under Nazi rule. He clearly wanted these writings to be preserved, and luckily Bethge, then serving in the German army in Italy, was able to send most of them back to his wife in Berlin, with instructions to bury them in the garden, from where they were subsequently recovered after the war was over. It was these Letters and Papers from Prison, which were to be translated in English by the end of the 1940s, and which established Bonhoeffer’s reputation as the most challenging voice of his era.

Bonhoeffer’s insights about the future of theology, of the church and of Christian witness were in fact a continuation of his significant theological contributions of earlier years. His book The Cost of Discipleship, written in 1937, is an extended meditation upon the Sermon on the Mount. It is deservedly popular as a guide to a disciplined Christian life, and expresses his deep faith that the Christian must not compromise his or her beliefs when faced with the pressures and temptations of the contemporary world. But in the following years, as the political crises became more overwhelming, Bonhoeffer recognized the danger of seeking personal salvation alone and isolating Christian holiness from events in the surrounding world. By 1944 he had come to see that “it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to believe.” Clearly, he could affirm that salvation is not be to be found in seeking rescue or removal from the evils of this life. It was in part this realization that spurred him on to seek for a wider and more authentic answer to the questions he had raised before.
By April 1944, Bonhoeffer had been forced to realize that his hopes for an early release, despite his many connections with the Berlin social elite, were in vain. The legal aspects of his interrogation and possible trial had become so convoluted that little progress could be expected. Furthermore he had to recognize that the Nazi state no longer acknowledged the earlier norms of jurisprudence, but rather at this stage of the war, the sole decisive factor was the arbitrary and unpredictable will of the Führer. He could only expect, at best, to be incarcerated for a lengthy period. But he remained cheerful, and looked forward to the opportunity to concentrate on his theological reflections, despite the absence of any theological library. The result was one of his most creative periods.

For the next few months, Bonhoeffer embarked on a wide-ranging theological exploration in a series of letters exchanged with Bethge, which were challenging to many of his own and his church’s preconceptions. His thoughts took on a much more radical tone, not merely because of his own dire predicament, but also because of the disastrous situation outside. But we should be wrong to infer that these last writings were the product of his stressful and seemingly hopeless situation, resulting in a breakdown of nerve, or in an overstressed mind. To be sure he very much felt the pain of his isolation from the rich and supportive family life he had enjoyed before, and undoubtedly he shared with Luther those moments of Anfechtungen, or spiritual assaults, from which his sure faith rescued him. But his sufferings were in reality more mental and moral than physical. He never glorified suffering for its own sake, in contrast to some forms of Christian asceticism. In fact, the evidence is clear that this outburst of theological creativity tied in with his earlier patterns of thought, and was part of his vision of what his church and society might become.

In 1939 he had noted that, with the imminence of war, “Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization might survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization”. Three years later, his worst predictions had come true. The war’s physical, moral and spiritual devastations, all combined to demand a new stocktaking. Germany would be defeated, but Christian civilization would not survive. So he could note: “What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today”. It is clear that the answers of earlier days would no longer suffice.
The collapse of the western form of Christianity led him to the conclusion that the “religious a priori” of mankind, on which Christianity had based its preaching and theology for 1900 years, could no longer be sustained. The Constantinian panoply of power which had upheld the religion of the church for so long was not credible. Since the world had come of age, what was required was a religionless form of Christianity. “But what does this mean for the Church? And how can Christ become the Lord of the religionless?” In his view, it was not only the mythological concepts of the Christian message, but religious concepts in general which were problematic. “Modern man has learnt to live without recourse to the working hypothesis‚ called ‘God’. The clergy still try to claim that the world cannot live without the tutelage of ‘God’. But in fact He has been marginalized, and pushed out of the world, or relegated to being a remote impassive observer. . . . We cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur.”

Even more radical was Bonhoeffer’s challenge to the traditional views of God’s omnipotence. In the circumstances of total violence and destruction, his thoughts revolved around the cumulative and appalling suffering of so many men, women and children at this crucial stage of the war. From his contacts with the anti-Nazi resistance, he had learnt of the dreadful crimes committed by his countrymen against millions of Jews, Poles, Russians, gypsies and the mentally handicapped. He was equally aware that millions of his own countrymen, including members of his family, had been misled into losing their lives in the service of this infamous regime. How could this suffering be reconciled with a loving Christ? It was a time when the perennial questions became even more insistent: “Where is God in all this? Why doesn’t he intervene to put a stop to it?” It was just at this critical juncture that Bonhoeffer heard the news that the planned assassination of Hitler had failed. The likely consequences were all too clear, and the tone of his thinking and writing was from then on increasingly filled with foreboding. His preoccupation with suffering and death becomes even more forceful. The imagery and significance of Christ’s crucifixion became ever more real. Out of this came his shortest but perhaps most memorable poem, written in the same month, Christians and Others.

All men go to God in their distress,
seek help and pray for bread and happiness,
deliverance from pain, guilt and death,
All men do, Christians and others

All men go to God in His distress
find Him poor, reviled, without shelter or bread,
watch Him tormented by sin, weakness and death.
Christians stand by God in His hour of grieving

God goes to all men in their distress,
satisfies body and sould with His bread,
dies, crucified for all, Christians and others,
and both alike forgiving.

We should note that the title of this poem is rather unfortunate, and the English translations even more so. Christen und Heiden, Christians and Heathen, does not address the relationship of Christianity with other religions. Equally unfitting is the alternative, Christians and Pagans. The contrast is really between the true Christian disciple and those others of “normal” religiosity, who still maintained their traditional expectations of how God should act to assuage their pains and griefs. Hence I prefer the less colourful word, Christians and Others.

Bonhoeffer’s motive for writing this poem arose out of his bible readings and meditations on the subject of suffering. He was certainly not just preoccupied with his own fate, but rather overwhelmed by the lethal prospects which all his friends in the resistance movement now faced. He knew enough about personal anguish to give authenticity to his statements on suffering. His purpose was to clarify his understanding of the theologia crucis. In three short verses he is outstandingly successful.

In their distress all men turn to God. Verse one reflects the universal human desire for relief, for removal of the pain, for cessation of the suffering, for deliverance from death. This makes their religion a form of spiritual pharmacy.
But all too often these prayers are not answered. By 1944 the mass murders seemed unstoppable. Christ was being tortured and crucified anew on Nazi Golgothas. Why did not God respond to such heartfelt petitions, but instead seemingly remained silent?

Bonhoeffer’s answer, in his letter of July 18th, while not exactly new, is equally audacious and thought-provoking. “God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and this is exactly the way, the only way in which he can be with us and help. Matthew 8:17 [This is to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah,”He took our infirmties and bore our diseases] makes it crystal clear that Christ helps us not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering”. To be a Christian is to stand by Christ in his hour of grieving, on the cross, in jail, in the bombed-out streets and concentration camps. This is a reversal of what religious man expects of God. But . “Man is summoned to participate in God’s suffering at the hands of a godless world. This is what makes a Christian what he is”. It is not church practices, religious activity, or creedal conformity which makes a person a Christian but identification with God’s suffering in the world.

Certainly Bonhoeffer knew well that the sufferings and deaths he was daily made aware of could not be ascribed to the moral failings of the individuals concerned. Rather these tribulations had, and have, to be understood as the result of collective human willful sinfulness. But God has not withdrawn into a remote impassivity. Rather, God suffers alongside his creation.

God suffers too.

All men go to God in His distress
find him poor, reviled, without shelter or bread,

The most compelling example of God’s suffering is, of course, the Passion of Jesus upon the Cross. Here, as verse 2 alludes, all men

watch him tormented by sin, weakness and death.

This theology of the Cross is not new, and the poem emphasizes two central themes of the Passion: first, that Jesus the man suffers a cruel and horrible death, and God does not intervene; second, that, on the Cross, Jesus not only bears our griefs and carries our sorrows, but does so, not for our sins only, but for the sins of the whole world.

What is new, and indeed even more striking, is that, in this poem, as elsewhere, Bonhoeffer forsakes the dominant tradition about the doctrine of the Atonement. For a thousand years the western Christian church had followed the teachings of St. Anselm, reinforced by the 16th century Calvinist theologians, which upheld the penal substitutionary theory of Jesus‚ sacrifice on the cross. Jesus paid the price for man’s wickedness and unholiness. He acted as our Advocate with the Father. He is the propitiation for our sins This deep-set imagery is found throughout the art, hymnody and liturgies of both Catholicism and Protestantism.

But Bonhoeffer completely avoids the use of this imagery and vocabulary. He makes no references to the juridical, legal, or commercial metaphors of this interpretation with its view of a wrathful God demanding a sacrifice and propitiation, in payment for the price of sin. Here, on the cross, Jesus is the suffering servant, bearing our griefs, carrying our sorrows, wounded for our transgressions, and forgiving our transgressions. It was no accident that Bonhoeffer should deliberately have invoked the Old Testament witness of Isaiah. The path to salvation is to be found by seeking to restore the wholeness of creation, by binding up the wounds caused by sin and death. It is an act of love for all mankind, when the salvation of the world is brought about by taking up the burden of human sinfulness, and thereby reconciling mankind to God. But it is also the way in which God triumphs in the world.

By carrying this burden, Jesus extends his mercy to all mankind.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi.

(In parenthesis, the “normal” – religious – translation makes this a plea to remove, or take away, the sins of the world. But an older understanding calls for the word “tollis‚ to hold its original sense – to carry the burden of sin, and thereby to witness to the power of love.)

What should the responses of Christians be? Not like others, who merely pass by, to whom the sight of a dead Jew on a cross is nothing. But Christians in this situation of crisis have a particular and significant calling. As the last line of verse 2 states, Christians must

stand by God in His hour of grieving.

This is a very special form of discipleship. Not passively by-standing as onlookers, but rather standing by and alongside, that is, wholeheartedly committed to their crucified God in His hour of grieving. In the German phrase, this is the true form of “Mit-Leid‚. His mother Mary and his disciple John were the first to take up this role.

Stabat mater, dolorosa
iuxta crucem lacrimosa.

In a letter written to Bethge shortly after the poem was completed, Bonhoeffer expanded on these cryptic lines.

“This is what distinguishes Christians from others. Jesus asked in Gethsemane, “Could you not watch with me one hour?‚ This is a reversal of what the religious man expects of God. Instead, man is summoned to share in God’s suffering at the hands of a godless world”.

True faith is therefore found by men and women who are committed to participate in the sufferings of God in the secular life. Christ’s followers are called to a salvific expiation for the sins of the world, watching with Christ in Gethsemane. It is a witness that extends across the centuries, from the death of Jesus on the Cross to the martyrdom of modern Christians, such as Bonhoeffer himself, in the killing fields of today.

This is what truly marks a Christian disciple, “not in the first place thinking of one’s own needs, problems, sins, and fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up in the way of Jesus Christ, into the messianic event”.

But where shall we find the strength and the grace to become such disciples? Verse 3 of the poem boldly asserts that, despite the sins we have all committed, despite the barriers we have all erected, despite all our efforts to behave like others, religiously, nevertheless

God goes to all men in their distress.

Moreover, in his institution of the sacrament of the last supper, by sharing with us his Body and his Blood, he has given us the power to share in his pain and suffering. Thereby he

satisfies body and soul with His bread

and leaves us this memorial of himself, a full perfect and sufficient witness for the sins of the whole world.

But God does not come to men and women, as they would so often wish, to remove their pain and sufferings. Only in the messianic age will every tear be wiped away. Until then, Christ grants to his followers, through his Eucharist, the power to stand with him, as he suffers at the hands of a hostile world. And as we do, we will realize an even greater truth. Despite all that we, men and women, have inflicted on our Christ, he looks down on us from the Cross

crucified for all, Christians and others
and both alike forgiving.

Christ’s forgiveness is not some quasi-legal procedure, a particular transaction at some stage and external to the actual relationship, but rather the totality of God’s accepting of humanity. This cannot be a sentimental or easy matter, for it is directed to those who have degraded and tortured him. But the cross reveals God’s forgiving love which refuses to be overcome by the evil in human lives and the world. The work of Christ is to bring healing and deliverance, and thereby to restore the imago dei in us all. This is the work of salvation, and the effective means of reconciliation between God and the world.

In these ideas, we can surely hear the overtones of Luther’s theologia crucis, itself derived from much earlier understandings of the Atonement, such as those of Irenaeus. This theme is outlined in the final short chapter of The Cost of Discipleship. Jesus restores the image of God in us, first by his total identification with humanity in incarnation, and then by calling us into fellowship and discipleship with himself, even to the sharing of his passion and death.

When Christ calls a man, he bids he come and die.

In October, Bonhoeffer was transferred to the far more ominous and menacing Gestapo prison in central Berlin. But the evidence that we have is that his own faith and trust in his crucified Lord led him to identify more and more with the future hope of resurrection beyond death. So he could therefore face the inevitable testing through suffering by affirming his belief in God’s guiding hand, and the assuredness of God’s nearness. In his final poem By the powers of Good, the central verse takes up this issue

But, should you offer us instead the bitter cup
Of suffering, filled to the brim and overflowing,
We will accept it gratefully without flinching
From your good and ever-loving hand.

In his final letter from Tegel prison, he could write:

Please don’t ever get anxious or worried about me, but don’t forget to pray for me – I’m sure you don’t. . . You must never doubt that I am travelling with gratitude and cheerfulness along the road where I’m being led. My past life is brim-full of God’s goodness, and my sins are covered by the forgiving love of Christ crucified. I’m most thankful for the people I have met, and I only hope they will never have to grieve about me, but that they, too, will always be certain of, and thankful for, God’s mercy and forgiveness.

We have one last glimpse of Bonhoeffer on April 7th 1945, in the
schoolhouse at Schönberg in the remote Bavarian hinterlands, where he had been brought after a two months‚ stay in Buchenwald. Here he and a group of other prisoners, including the British Military Intelligence officer, Captain Payne Best, celebrated the Sunday after Easter with a short service. Bonhoeffer read the set texts: Isaiah 53:5 “With his wounds we are healed”, and 1 Peter 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

But then two guards arrived to summon him to leave. There was only time to ask Captain Best, if he survived, to take a short message to England, and to remember him to his ecumenical partner and friend, Bishop George Bell of Chichester: “Tell him that for me this is the end but also the beginning – with him I believe in the principle of our Universal Christian brotherhood which rises above all national interests, and that our victory is certain.”

He was then taken back to the notorious concentration camp Flossenbürg, where on the same night he was to be arraigned, convicted, condemned to death, and in the gray dawn of the following morning, April 9th, executed by hanging.

Bonhoeffer has no known burial site. But his courageous faith in the power of God’s forgiveness has proven in subsequent years to be an inspiring source of healing and cure for the sins of his nation and his church.

Dear Friends,

This is a special issue in commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose 100th birthday falls on February 4th.

Against principalities and powers – letters from a Brazilian Jail
Fr. Betto

Obedience:

I owe obedience
to the poor whom Jesus served
to the pathways of hope in my time
to concrete and effective love for others

I do not owe obedience
to anything that renders me less free
less human
less committed
less aware
to the laws that shackle human beings
and stifle the spread of the gospel
to the traditions that drain the Christian life
of its pristine force
to anything that makes me look
more obedient and less Christian
more prudent and less evangelical

Obedience cannot mean
cowardice
conformism
egotism
over-protectedness
fear of risk
orthodoxy

Obedience should
lead to a cross not a throne

Bonhoeffer Commemoration Symposium, Vancouver, February 17 -18th 2006

To mark the 100th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s birth, we are organizing a symposium to be held at Regent College, Vancouver, adjacent to the University of British Columbia.. The programme will begin on Friday 17th at 7 p.m. with a showing of M.Doblmeier’s biographical film, and will continue on Saturday 18th, at 9 a.m., when papers will be read by Craig Slane, Jens Zimmermann and J.S. Conway. On Saturday afternoon, we shall show the very moving film “Weapons of the Spirit” about the rescue of French Jews in 1944, made by a survivor, Pierre Sauvage. The public is cordially invited, and there is no registration fee. Further details can be obtained by writing to me at: jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Roberts, Bonhoeffer and King; Böllmann, Bonhoeffer and Jochen Klepper
b) J. de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit: Bonhoeffer’s friend Eberhard Bethge
c) P.Monteath, Australia’s Lutheran Churches and Refugees from Hitler’s Germany
d) Douglas J. Hall, Bound and Free. A theologian’s journey

1a) Deotis Roberts, Bonhoeffer and King. Speaking the truth to power, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press 2005. 160pp ISBN 0-664-22652-3

Wolfgang Böllmann, “Wenn ich dir begegnet wäre” Dietrich Bonhoeffer und Jochen Klepper im Gespräch, Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt 2005 164 pp.
ISBN 3-374-02259-6

In July 1997 ten new statuettes of Christian martyrs of the twentieth century were unveiled on the front portico of Westminster Abbey. Amongst them were Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite the fact that they lived on different continents and were separated by nearly three decades, comparisons of their respective Christian witness are valuable and instructive – quite apart from the fact that their lives were both cut short at the same early age of 39. J. Deotis Roberts is himself a leading figure among the black Baptist community and intimate with the King family. His own path took him more into academic, rather than activist pursuits. For this reason he has an innate sympathy with Bonhoeffer’s lecturing career, and recognizes how valuable a legacy is left to us in Bonhoeffer’s teachings and writings. He seeks to make the point that however heroic and/or tragic these men’s deaths may have been, it is surely their lives and witness that will count in the long run. In particular Roberts stresses the common thread between them, which lay in their determination to face the political evils of their day with faith and courage, and to speak the truth to power, at whatever cost.

Roberts’short book traces these two men’s parallel biographies, drawing on his personal memories of King and the standard biographies of Bonhoeffer. Readers already familiar with these sources will find little new in his interpretation, but his analysis of the evolution of their respective political theologies is illuminating.

The common factor was their Christian-based opposition to racism. Bonhoeffer, to be sure, was not born into a situation of endemic racial antagonism, but realized early on, even before Hitler came to power, the incompatibility of the Nazi attitudes towards the Jews with any true understanding of Christianity. The majority of his Protestant colleagues, including leading theologians, refused to accept the consequences. Instead they temporized or argued that the political or diplomatic advantages of Hitler’s rule outweighed any extremist antisemitic rantings, which would surely be abandoned once the Nazis took the reins of power. And there is evidence that, to begin with, Bonhoeffer’s protests were centred on the plight of the Christian Jews. Only later did he realize that the call to discipleship demanded defence of the rights of all Jews, converts or not, because Christianity was indissolubly bound to Israel and to all its people. Such an insight was shared by only a few. And still fewer were prepared to engage in illegal and seemingly treacherous actions to put a spoke in Nazism’s wheels.., Bonhoeffer was disowned by his own church after his arrest, and even after his martyrdom. His speaking of truth to power was a lonely and dangerous pilgrimage.

By contrast, King’s opposition to racism was part of his in-bred experience, growing up in a black family, church and community in the southern United States. His commitment to the pursuit of social justice is really self-explanatory. More remarkable was the vitality and leadership he developed in this cause, which distinguished him from so many other black church leaders. Equally notable was the fact alongside his privileged upbringing and elitist education, King had a vision to lift up the sufferings of his people and to challenge the racist structures and policies of the United States. Like Bonhoeffer, King was at first influenced by the example of Gandhi, but also by the sober realism of Reinhold Niebuhr. Both he and Bonhoeffer became increasingly conscious of the power of collective evil and the need to speak out against it from the truth of Christian perspectives.

Roberts can find no evidence that Bonhoeffer’s thought or actions influenced King. Nor was his example used in the black liberation struggle. But Roberts believes that Bonhoeffer ought to be an important figure for blacks, if only to show that in such a cause as theirs they were and are not alone. Hence the cogent summaries of Bonhoeffer’s witness. Roberts sees the significance and the link in both lives as consisting in their commitment to Christian political activism. Both refused to limit their Christian witness merely to the pursuit of personal piety, nor to indulge in wishful thinking that all would work out well for their nations because of their supposedly Christian leaders. Both believed that the struggle against the corrosive forces of racism and injustice required a witness unto death for the sake of the oppressed. In Bonhoeffer’s words: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”. Both were convinced they should speak for the voiceless and suffer on behalf of the powerless. Such a prophetic stance in the end cost both men their lives. But as King said: ” Death is not so much the ultimate evil; the ultimate evil is to be outside God’s love.”

Wolfgang Böllmann gives us another set of comparisons in the potential interaction of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the talented German novelist and poet Jochen Klepper. Klepper is unfortunately little known in English-speaking countries, because his works have not been translated. But he shared with Bonhoeffer a strong sense of Prussian patriotism and a traditional Lutheran respect for established authority. But Klepper was married to a Jewish wife, which unfortunately brought his public career to a sudden end in 1933. For several years he survived on his novelist’s skills, but was unwilling to accept the fact that Nazi barbarism and racism were now the paramount force in Germany. His ambivalence was even more pronounced in 1940 when he willingly joined the German army, and was bitterly disappointed when he was dismissed a year later on account of his Jewish wife. His attempts to obtain permission for her daughter to emigrate led him into a bureaucratic nightmare of refusals. So in December 1942, he, his wife and step-daughter tragically committed suicide.

Böllmann’s close study of both Klepper and Bonhoeffer as contemporaries and Christians leads him to construct a series of fictitious conversations the two men could have had, as they respectively grappled with the evil consequences of Nazi rule. He shares with us some of Klepper’s poetry, infused with his real spiritual piety, and draws on the extensive and revealing diary Under the shadow of thy wings to depict Klepper’s frustrations and terror which led him to decide that suicide was the only way out Four months after that event, Bonhoeffer was arrested, and Böllmann makes use of the surviving Letters and Papers from Prison to draw a portrait of how Bonhoeffer sought to come to terms with his plight. He suggests that Klepper was a direct inspiration for some of Bonhoeffer’s remarkable and deeply inspiring prison poems. Written at a time when Bonhoeffer could, at any moment, have been summarily tried and executed, these poems are a striking witness and thought-provoking legacy. Böllmann’s brief elucidation of the parallels between these two men’s lives is a sincere tribute to the faith which they shared and which we have inherited.

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1b) John W.de Gruchy, Daring, Trusting Spirit. Bonhoeffer’s Friend Eberhard Bethge, Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2005. 221pp. ISBN 0-8006-3758-5

The South African theologian John de Gruchy is to be congratulated on this fine tribute to his German colleague Eberhard Bethge. Bethge, who died in March 2000 at the age of ninety, is best known as the close friend and later the biographer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred German theologian and resister against Hitler’s tyranny. Bethge was one of the first students at the illegal seminary for pastors directed by Bonhoeffer, accompanied him as he moved from pacifism to clandestine opposition to the regime, and was the recipient of the famous Letters and Papers from Prison. In 1942 Bethge married Bonhoeffer’s niece, Renate, which brought him still closer to the Bonhoeffer family. In April 1945, only days before the end of the war, Bonhoeffer, his brother and two brothers-in-law were all murdered by the Nazis. It was a shattering blow which marked the survivors for the rest of their lives.

Bethge understandably became the staunch supporter of the remaining Bonhoeffer family. With their help he began the long task of compiling and editing his friend’s literary texts. This was in fact to become his life’s work, and was completed only shortly before his death more than fifty years later. His full-scale biography has been recognized as one of the great biographies of the century, and de Gruchy serves us well in describing how this work was undertaken. It was the definitive study just because no one else was so close to Bonhoeffer or understood his theology so intimately. Had anyone else taken on this task, in all likelihood we would have had a rather different Bonhoeffer today. But, as one commentator noted, Bethge’s life work was something very different from the preservation of a legacy; what Bethge had been engaged in was a “highly dynamic and thoroughly open‚ process of recreating Bonhoeffer’s thought for new situations. In short, as de Gruchy points out, without Bethge we would not know or understand Bonhoeffer in the way we do today. But the reverse is equally true: without Bonhoeffer, Bethge’s life would have been very different. He was indeed a “daring, trusting spirit‚, as Bonhoeffer called him in one of his prison poems.

Bethge’s motives were clear: he was Bonhoeffer’s intimate friend for ten years; he was married into the Bonhoeffer family; and he shared a close affinity with Bonhoeffer’s theology. But the task of making his mentor’s views known and accepted was to be an arduous and daunting one. Contrary to the present-day popularity and acceptance of Bonhoeffer’s theology, the situation in 1945 was very different. At the time of Germany’s national defeat, the reputation of those who had participated in the anti-Nazi resistance movement, including those who actively supported the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, was highly controversial. The fact that Bonhoeffer, as an ordained Lutheran minister, should have championed the plan to murder the head of state was regarded as offensive by most of his conservative establishment colleagues. Even years later, when his friends sought to unveil a plaque in his memory at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp and invited the Evangelical Bishop of Munich to take part in the ceremony, he brusquely turned them down with the remark that Bonhoeffer had been put to death as a national traitor not as a Christian martyr. In effect he got what he deserved.

In such a climate, Bethge’s efforts were uphill work. The reforming impulse expressed by younger members of the Confessing Church was largely overlaid after 1945 by the desire of the majority of churchmen to return to stability, with a convenient amnesia about their support for the Nazi regime. Even the call for a new beginning expressed in the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt of October 1945 was disputed. The energetic demands for repentance made by Bonhoeffer’s colleague, Martin Niemöller, who had survived eight years in concentration camp, received a lukewarm reception.

Bethge’s determination to act as the interpreter of his friend’s theological views was therefore in part prompted by the need to challenge this post-war atmosphere of comfort-seeking restoration. He rightly saw that Bonhoeffer’s radical ideas developed during his years in Tegel prison would be an effective way of making his legacy known. To this end, he dug up the surviving letters and papers which had been buried in the family’s garden for security. These letters, which had been smuggled out of the prison through the good services of one of the prison guards, were, for this reason, both unique and precious, affording at least a glimpse of the perilous circumstances in which this correspondence was conducted Though incomplete, they contained an invaluable picture of Bonhoeffer’s theological development. Bethge then selected what seemed to him the most relevant theological sections, leaving aside the more personal and private passages. He also omitted his own replies, which were later on shown to have been both a comfort and a significant stimulus to the incarcerated Bonhoeffer.

When they were first published in 1951, these Letters and Papers from Prison had an immediate and remarkable reception, not only in Germany but particularly in the English-speaking world. They rapidly became a Christian classic. The book appeared at the right time, just when the first glimmer of hope arose out of the moral and physical disasters of the war. The challenges contained in Bonhoeffer’s prison thoughts were welcomed by those who sought new approaches and who were no longer content with stale presentations of the church’s traditional doctrines. In addition, Bonhoeffer’s views were enhanced, particularly in North America, by the fact of his martyrdom.

This success prompted Bethge to begin editing more of Bonhoeffer’s earlier texts. At the time he was on the staff of Otto Dibelius, the Confessing Church leader now advanced to be the Bishop of Berlin. Together with a group of younger clergy, many of whom had been associated with Bonhoeffer, Bethge joined a “ginger group” which published a critical magazine Unterwegs in pursuit of their vision for the future of the church. Together they helped him to explore Bonhoeffer’s legacy.

But Berlin at the time was a dangerous place, blockaded by Soviet forces and infiltrated by agents. For those who had survived the Nazi tyranny, it was an uncomfortable situation. Moreover, the atmosphere in West Germany was unpleasant. Attempts to bring Nazi criminals to trial often failed. For example, the SS Colonel Huppenkothen who had interrogated Bonhoeffer and others of the July 1944 conspiracy, was acquitted despite legal appeals, much to the outrage of the Bonhoeffer family. For these reasons, in 1953 Bethge welcomed an invitation to follow in Bonhoeffer’s footsteps by becoming pastor to the German congregation in London, just twenty years after his friend.

In Britain, Bethge noted with pleasure the remarkable interest in Bonhoeffer’s ideas. He was able to link up with Bishop George Bell of Chichester, Bonhoeffer’s champion, and with the British publishing houses, who were very pleased with the success of The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. With their encouragement, and with that of Paul Lehmann of Harvard University, Bethge resolved to undertake the writing of a full biography, based on the considerable compilation of notes and records he had saved. A year’s sabbatical at Harvard Divinity School gave him the time and opportunity to get started.

This biography was no act of nostalgic atavism, or of filial piety. Rather, Bethge always saw it as a contribution towards the reconstruction of church life in Germany. At the same time he sought to present a defence of the moral understandings which had motivated the members of the German Resistance. He had also to describe the Church Struggle against the Nazis, and the fortunes of the ecumenical movement of the 1930s, and as well to outline the developments in theology in the historical context of those years. This was to be a massive task, resulting in the end in 1100 pages of print. But more and more the emphasis came to be placed on the significance of Bonhoeffer’s theology, defending his positions against the criticisms of other prominent theologians such as Karl Barth or Rudolf Bultmann. Thus the book came to be both a historical narrative and a theological interpretation. When it appeared in 1967, despite its great length, it received wide acclaim.

De Gruchy give a masterly account of how Bethge combined the roles of biographer and interpreter. His numerous appearances before audiences in both Germany and North America helped to present a balanced picture of the martyr-theologian and to draw out the lessons for Christians today. De Gruchy rightly notes that Bonhoeffer’s views were broadly disseminated through the appearance of such books as Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God. All at once Bonhoeffer’s phrase “religionless Christianity” came to have wide currency. This upset many who had been earlier attracted by the rather saintly author of The Cost of Discipleship. On the other hand, some “secular‚ or “death of God‚ theologians now claimed Bonhoeffer to be one of them. Bethge was at pains to correct such defective views of his mentor.

In the eyes of some observers, Bethge’s whole life seemed to be one of self-effacing devotion to that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But de Gruchy points out that there were two separate areas in which Bethge made a highly significant contribution in his own right. The first of these was in South Africa. The Bethges were invited to go there in 1973, and were soon caught up in the heated debates about the moral and theological justifications for the prevailing system of apartheid. The impact of racial intolerance was evident on all sides. Inevitably, this brought to mind the parallels with the Church Struggle against Nazi racism. Bethge’s support of the anti-apartheid forces, and his awareness of the black theologians demonstrated a sensitivity clearly derived from his own earlier experiences. He came to recognize more than ever that the burning issues of the day were those of justice, peace and liberation from oppression. He therefore repeatedly stressed the need for a confession of Christ that spoke directly to questions of racism and human rights.

Even more significant was the lead Bethge gave in the contested field of Christian-Jewish reconciliation in Germany. From 1970 onwards he was increasingly burdened by memories and interpretations of the Holocaust He was easily persuaded that the German churches must unequivocally declare their repentance for their complicity in these atrocities. At the same time, they must begin to take appropriate steps to change the sad legacy of the church’s antisemitic, or anti-Judaic, teachings. In this regard he clearly went much further than Bonhoeffer had done. But, as de Gruchy correctly points out, this was a late conversion on Bethge’s part. In his own autobiography, he had described how, in his youth, he had had no contact with Jews. In his biography of Bonhoeffer, the Jewish issue was not tackled head-on. Indeed Bethge remained ambiguous about the extent to which Bonhoeffer’s joining the resistance movement could be attributed to his sympathy for the victimized Jews, or how far Bonhoeffer had repudiated traditional Lutheran antisemitism.

Not until after the biography was finished did Bethge come to see the centrality of the Jewish issue for Christians. But from then onwards, he became the most outspoken champion of the need for all church followers of whatever denomination to adopt a new stance. It would not be enough merely to overcome the social and political prejudices of earlier years. Far more significant, Bethge argued, was the need to change Christian theological attitudes towards Judaism as a whole.

The centuries-old calumny, whereby Christians had seen Jews as deservedly outcast and reprobate, or alternatively as targets of Christian evangelism, should be abandoned. Instead, a new and much more positive approach to Jews and Judaism must be adopted. Persuading his Lutheran colleagues to accept this new stance proved to be a taxing and arduous procedure throughout those years. Admittedly the way had been paved by the declarations from the Second Vatican Council in Rome. But it is clear that these hard-boiled Lutheran clergy were reluctant to learn from their Catholic counterparts.

Bethge played a leading role in urging his own church of the Rhineland to take a clear and strong position. In 1980 this Synod issued an important statement which tackled the implications of the Holocaust, clearly rejected any form of antisemitism, and even called for the abandonment of the traditional kind of missionary activity towards the Jews. Throughout the rest of his life, Bethge continued to wrestle with the issue of how Christians, especially Germans, could find new ways of entering into dialogue with Jews. This meant, primarily, rejecting Christian triumphalism, which so often had caused terrible crimes against Jews. Instead, he argued, along with Bonhoeffer, that the Christian should stand in solidarity with the poor, the oppressed, and the victims, and participate, with Jesus, in their sufferings.

In his retirement, Bethge continued to be fully engaged in writing, speaking and editing. The flood of visitors requesting information or help about Bonhoeffer was incessant. The new and complete edition of all Bonhoeffer’s works, in 17 volumes, required his nearly full-time consideration. We can therefore be grateful to John de Gruchy for giving us this appealing portrait of a great teacher, whose generous humanity and loyalty to his friend Bonhoeffer enriched all who knew him or read his writings. It was Bethge’s particular gift that he could become the interpreter of one of Germany’s most significant theologians. As de Gruchy says, by gathering the fragments of Bonhoeffer’s life and theology into a coherent, meaningful whole, he brought them to appropriate posthumous completion through his scholarship and his ministry. His was a remarkably fulfilled life.

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1c) Peter Monteath, Dear Dr. Janzow. Australia’s Lutheran Churches and Refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Australian Humanities Press 2005. 116 pp. ISN 0-9758313-0-5

Australian attitudes towards Nazi Germany’s persecution and expulsion of its Jewish citizens were ambivalent. The Anglo-Irish majority of the island’s population still maintained considerable anti-German and anti-alien feelings left over from the first world war. Only a few liberal voices expressed sympathy for those suffering under a far-distant tyranny. So too the Australian churches responded in a bemusingly inconsistent manner. Some were still guided by a traditional anti-Judaic stance; others recognized a Christian duty to extend help to those afflicted by dreadful mistreatment in Europe. Among the latter were a group of South Australian Lutherans. In November 1938, one of their leaders, Dr Janzow, described the appalling pogrom in Germany of a few days earlier as “pagan” and said he could not understand how a civilized nation could perpetrate such horrors. At the same time, he announced a scheme whereby the Lutheran churches planned to bring refugee Jews to Australia, by raising funds and making loans so that they could resettle in a new homeland.

This news item found its way into the London Times on 15 November 1938, was widely reproduced and led to a large response from numerous applicants across Europe replying to Dr Janzow’s initiative. Hence the title of this book. These letters were recently exhibited in Adelaide, and Professor Peter Monteath of Flinders University was asked to write an accompanying guide to put them in context. His well-researched study gives the background in both Europe and Australia, to this heart-warming proposal to assist these victims of racial intolerance.

Unfortunately, the maze of bureaucratic regulations in both countries meant that majority of Dr Janzow’s correspondents never succeeded in reaching safety. In fact, as he later admitted, he had not been able to do much for these refugees. Less than a year later, the outbreak of war put a stop to such plans. Only three known individuals came to a new life in Australia under these auspices. One was a Lutheran pastor, who had been brought to England by Bishop George Bell in the summer of 1939, but whose arrival in Australia in 1940 was marred by his prompt incarceration as an enemy alien. It took the Lutheran church four years to secure his release, though his later career was luckily successful. Peter Monteath’s researches tracked down the tragic fate of several more of Dr Janzow’s applicants, murdered in concentration camps. But his achievement is to have preserved and published this moving selection of letters. They show the desperate plight of those seeking a life-line from the persecutions they faced in Hitler’s Germany. “Small though they are in number, and by now far removed from us in time, they nevertheless have the capacity to reach to us across the decades and to touch us. They remind us of the importance of preserving our common humanity and of the costs of losing it” (p. 3).

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1d) Douglas John Hall, Bound and Free. A theologian’s journey. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2005. 156 pp ISBN 0-8006-3773 -9.

“Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship was the first strictly theological book I ever read. That was in the summer of 1949. I was enthralled by Bonhoeffer from the outset.” So records Douglas Hall, now Canada’s leading Protestant theologian, in his delightful and thought-provoking account of his theological journey over the past half-century. As a young man, he was greatly influenced by German theology, not only by Bonhoeffer, but particularly by Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and more latterly by Jürgen Moltmann. He learnt from them that the theologian’s vocation calls for a strong concern for academic excellence combined with a commitment to the welfare of the Christian community. He learnt also from them the twin dangers of detachment and its opposite, seduction by secular ideologies. Dry-as-dust theologians separated from active church life may find themselves without relevance; but no less perilous is what happens to the churches when their teachers mislead them. They become collectivities of a nebulous sort of “fellowship”, or activists willfully pursuing political goals, or undifferentiated pietists. Today there is greater need for sound teaching than ever before. This is, of course, what Barth and Bonhoeffer were saying both during and after the Nazi catastrophe. But Hall reached the point where his theological journey necessitated his growing out of this tutelage. He turned his focus to finding a similarly prophetic tone for the social and political situations and theological witness in North America.

In so doing, he took over Bonhoeffer’s profound respect for the Christian faith, which led him to be extremely critical of the Christian religion. Hall is particularly critical of the kind of Christian triumphalism, either in a fundamentalist other-worldly or a liberal this-worldly guise, which seems to be providing justification for many of the political policies advocated by the world’s most imperialist power today. Instead of legitimizing the dominant culture, he believes, the Church is called to transform it. Theologians must struggle to articulate an alternate but living truth in a world that staggers from one piece of bad news to the next. The theological vocation, as Hall has lived it, requires courage, bound by tradition, but free to explore the realms of transcendence. To be a theologian is both a privilege and a joy.

Hall’s journey included many years of teaching, first in western Canada, and more latterly at McGill University in Montreal. But he continued to learn from the Germans. Moltmann’s The Theology of Hope made a great impression on him, just because he too was well aware of the devastating aftermath of World War II, and because his mentor Reinhold Niebuhr had already laid the foundations. But he found that Moltmann’s message, which was addressed to a defeated, despairing and spiritually empty society, was being taken up in North America as a confirmation of its own hope-affirming, even hope-demanding culture. His book Lighten our Darkness was written in the mid-1970s to counter this kind of easy optimism so prevalent in the churches on this side of the Atlantic. The Church’s hope is, however, based on the cross of Christ, not on material or political advances. “If the Gospel becomes nothing more than a sentimental pat-on-the-back for today’s technocratic utopianism, then we are falling for what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”.

In his subsequent book, The Cross in our Context, Hall again pointed out the dangers of religious triumphalism. Here the exclusionary deed, the aggressive and proselytizing stance, the crusading attitude and acts are products of those who believe that they are possessors of the Truth, with their innate sense of superiority and mandate to mastery. It is not good enough to point the finger at Islam. Christianity adopted such a stance for centuries, and even now reproduces it in various places.

Hall shares with Bonhoeffer and Moltmann, and indeed with Luther, his belief that the theology of the cross shows a better way. For him the glory and power of God are made manifest in the weakness and suffering of the crucified one. Through his suffering on the cross, through his bearing the burden of our griefs and sin, Jesus reconciles us to God and restores creation to its fulfillment. Above all, the cross challenges the easy assumption of mankind’s perpetual progress, or, in church terms, of Christendom’s eventual victory. Instead, forsaking these kinds of external props, the individual Christian must look at Jesus on the cross, abandoning shallow illusions, but embracing hope for the suffering world. Hall’s credo is aptly summed up in his poignant affirmation (p. 94): “If Jesus as he was and is and will be is our Guide into the great immensity that is life in this world, we shall find ourselves beckoned into places and causes and relationships whose breadth and scope will always astonish us, sometimes scare us, and in the end liberate us from the narrowness and provincialism of our own inherited values and destinies”.
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With very best wishes,
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

Let me send you all a warm greeting for the New Year from a wintry Vancouver. I can hardly believe that we are now opening Vol. XII of this Newsletter, but your words of encouragement over the past months have persuaded me that I should keep up this service as long as my health permits. And, once again, I should be glad to hear from any of you who would like to contribute a review, or a notice of interest, or an outline of your present research interests. Please remember NOT to press REPLY to these Newsletters but to send your comments to me direct at my personal e-mail = jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Bonhoeffer Commemoration:

I am glad to announce that a Canadian symposium in commemoration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s 100th anniversary will be held in Vancouver on Feb. 17-18th 2006, in Regent College Chapel, which is situated next to the University of British Columbia campus. This will be open to the public without charge, and we are particularly pleased to invite one of our list members, Craig Slane from Simpson University, Redding, California to be one of the presenters.
It is particularly encouraging that the writing of contemporary church history continues to flourish. Despite the decline in the number of dedicated professorships in universities, theological colleges, and seminaries, it is obvious that numerous scholarly works in our field are being published. This is still true in Germany, long the leader in this endeavour, where it can be said that the writing of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte thrives. Both the Catholic and Protestant official commissions responsible for the writing and publishing of such works have seen an increase in the number, and equally significantly in the quality, of the studies produced. So too other series, such as Konfession und Gesellschaft continue to make important contributions. And a scholarly journal with the title Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, which appears twice a year, has been produced now for eighteen years. To be sure, the German tradition of writing dissertations on a voluminous scale can be rather daunting, but evidently the generous subsidies given by granting bodies enable these works to see the light of day for the benefit of the wider public. No other country is presently competing on the same scale.

The result is that the pages of this Newsletter are more or less already bespoken for 2006.

My hope, however, is to maintain a certain ecumenical breadth of reviews, though the focus on Germany will certainly shine through in most of the issues. I trust this will prove to be of interest and value to you all.

John Conway

Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) Good, The Steamer Parish
b) Hauschild, Konfliktgemeinschaft Kirche
c) Plokhy and Sysyn, Religion and Nation in the Ukraine

2) Journal articles

a) Brechenmacher, The Pope and the Persecution of the Jews in Germany
b) Salemink, Dutch bishops’ protests 1942
c) Chapman, Secularisation and the Ministry of John Stott

1a) Charles M.Good Jr, The Steamer Parish. (The rise and fall of missionary medicine on an African frontier), Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. 2004. 487 pp. ISBN (cloth) 0-226-30281-4, (paper) 0-226-30282 -2

Missionary history has evolved rapidly in recent decades. The old-style laudatory accounts of heroic and self-sacrificing missionaries from Europe and North America serving in intemperate climes from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strands have largely been replaced by more objective sociological studies of the recipients’ reactions to the series of intrusive cultural penetrations by colonialist powers.

Charles M.Good Jr., however, in this excellently researched study of a small Anglican mission in the centre of Africa, adopts a new tack. He takes a highly critical, even hostile approach to the missionaries’ endeavours. Indeed he appears to believe that their spiritual ministry was mistaken, or at least misguided, although he pays tribute to the dedication of certain individuals who devoted their whole careers to what was often a frustrating and certainly costly vocation.

The Universities’ Mission to Central Africa was the direct result of a speech given by David Livingstone at the University of Cambridge in December 1857. Livingstone had called for men to come out to Africa to bring Christianity and (legitimate) commerce as the best way to put a stop to the atrocious evils of the slave trade. The Oxford and Cambridge recruits who responded to this appeal were, however, in a different category from those who had earlier joined the Church Missionary Society after William Wilberforce’s advocacy of the same cause. UMCA members were drawn from, and supported by, the “high” or Anglo-Catholic parishes of the Church of England. This gave their churchmanship a singular character, with its emphasis on the priesthood and on liturgy, service to the poorest and, for the missionaries themselves, a commitment to celibacy. The mission was much more Catholic in style than the prevalent evangelicalism of their sister missions, for example in Kenya or Uganda. UMCA’s sphere of operation was also much more limited, namely to the region of Lake Nyasa, later renamed Malawi, where the slave trade had been particularly vindictive. The first expedition in the 1860s seeking to reach this remote African hinterland proved utterly disastrous, and it was not until the middle 1870s that the mission was resurrected. It lasted for ninety years until Malawi achieved its political independence in 1964.

But Good’s focus is neither on the fortunes or misfortunes of the white missionaries; nor is he really interested in the populations to whom they ministered, who remain largely anonymous throughout. Instead he concentrates his study on the impact of the European technology brought to the region by UMCA. He not only has skillfully researched all the surviving records and publications – necessarily missionary-produced – but undertook his own on-the-spot visits to look for surviving mementos of this far-flung, and to some questionable, episode in Malawi’s history.

In particular, he sought to examine and evaluate two specific aspects, namely the arrival of mission steamships, imported from Britain, and the introduction of European medical practices. His account of the mission is woven around these two salient features. The book’s title reflects the significance of UMCA’s presence amidst the settlements up and down the nearly five hundred miles of Lake Nyasa, which formed the steamer parish. It became a unique and special ministry.

For the sake of protection, the mission established its headquarters on an island halfway up the lake. Here the missionaries were able to build schools, a hospital and eventually a massive and stately cathedral. But it was a choice they later regretted, since it made them entirely dependent on the steamers. As dramatic symbols of European technological and military superiority, the steamers were effective in projecting the British presence, checking the slave trade and establishing unprecedented law and order. The missionaries used them for their itinerant evangelization from village to village along both banks of the lake. Because the steamers were wood-fired, frequent refueling stops were required. So the impact was considerable.

On the other hand, the distances were so vast that even with the steamers the individual missionary could only visit any one settlement every other month. The steamers also carried people and goods, and were fitted out with a chapel and emergency beds, which were frequently in use to carry patients to and from the island hospital. Yet, this European intrusion was not welcomed by all. Several African chiefs, mostly adherents of Islam, found this to be a direct threat to their entrenched interests in the slave trade. The early years of the British presence therefore actually saw an increase in hostility and ecclesiastical rivalry.

After twenty-five years, UMCA brought a second and larger steamer to the lake. The advantages seemed obvious. More people could be reached for evangelism, more goods transported to remote communities, more travel undertaken. But at the same time, these increased expectations were often frustrated by technological failures. The steamers often needed repairs and maintenance. When boilers rusted or leaked, they had to be replaced from Britain. During the first world war, the colonial government commandeered the larger vessel for use against the German-held territory at the northern end of the lake, and didn’t release it until 1920.

Despite the steamers’ availability, and the undoubted drive of some of the missionaries to preach, teach and minister to the villagers along the lake, their ambitious hopes for mass conversions were never fulfilled. In part, the long-established Muslims resisted all such attempts; in part, the European character of the mission, and especially the requirement to live according to Christian principles, for example adopting monogamy, involved too great a challenge to the Africans’ ways of life. But equally, the missions’ success was crucially affected by the colonial government’s overall policies. Because each colony was required to pay for its own social services, the British authorities in Nyasaland imposed a head tax on the impoverished African population, which for ever increasing numbers could only be met by large-scale emigration to work in South Africa’s mines or Rhodesia’s farms. This left Malawi stripped of its most productive work force and only increased its economic backwardness. UMCA is not known to have made any coherent protest, let alone concerted opposition to this exploitative policy.

The colony was too poor to afford public education or publicly supported health facilities. As a result the missionaries were drawn into supplying these needs. To be sure, evangelism remained their top priority, but their knowledge of the local people and their compassion for their evident, and possibly curable, sufferings led them into provision of nursing stations, hospital facilities, maternity clinics and even operating rooms. They clearly hoped that these expressions of Christian mercy would lead their grateful patients to join the Christian communities in their home villages. Inevitably the introduction of western medicine came to be seen as a valuable weapon against the dark forces of superstition as provided by the witch doctor or indigenous medicine man.

Good’s examination of UMCA’s medical services occupies the second half of the book. His research into tropical diseases, their incidence in Malawi, and the various strategies developed to combat them, is exemplary. Basically his argument is that the mission’s resources were woefully inadequate, its strategy misplaced, and its effectiveness probably minimal. In the first place, the mission insisted on celibacy for its staff. When its principal and very talented doctor in the early 1900s wanted to marry the head nurse at one of the mission’s out-stations, they were both obliged to resign and leave the territory. Good is not surprisingly scathing about this requirement, all the more so since UMCA’s doggedly conservative insistence on celibacy created a barrier beyond most Africans’ comprehension. Repeatedly the London headquarters advertised for medical recruits but found none.

In the second place, the emphasis on healing the sick absorbed energies which would have been better deployed on preventive measures. To be sure, when finally the etiology of malaria was established by British scientists, the missionaries learnt to take precautionary steps against infection. And later on their policy of giving injections against virulent diseases or the ubiquitous ulcers, undoubtedly relieved much suffering. But equally obviously, the proportion of the population that could be reached was small. Many Africans remained terrified of western medical practices and preferred to rely on traditional remedies. Medical pluralism was thus a continuing feature, though the Europeans insisted on their superiority and were scornful of what they considered the pervasive evils of African medicine. This insensitivity, Good claims, was clearly part of their racist approach to the backward and benighted African people.

UMCA’s failure to attract medical help from their home base was only compounded by their reluctance to encourage training programmes for Africans. The result was that the available support was spread too thinly and unevenly, or not at all. In Good’s view, UMCA’s pattern was that of taking one step forward, and one or two underfunded steps backward. Particularly in the later years, as the colonial government began to recognize its responsibilities, the missionary hospitals were left behind. The facilities experienced a sad deterioration, and the lack of resources entailed a ever-growing over-extension of its capabilities. The lack of new recruits, or even of text books, meant that new knowledge never reached Malawi, and the training received by the staff so long before in Britain became sadly outdated. To be sure, their efforts were hampered by the generally inconsistent and ineffective fund-raising in Britain.
So Good’s verdict is hardly a positive one. UMCA remained too attached to its British base, too racist in its approach to the African society, and too limited in its outreach. With the coming of independence in 1964, the mission was unable to sustain itself, and was forced to amalgamate with the USPG. Despite genuine heroes, important accomplishments, and good intentions, UMCA never fulfilled its ambitious hope of bringing Christianity to central Africa. Its disappointing record closely parallels that of the whole British Empire. Good’s achievement is to describe soberly and dispassionately UMCA’s impact and legacy in this small and largely forgotten episode of mission history.

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1b) Wolf-Dietrich Hauschild, Konfliktgemeinschaft Kirche. (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Reihe B: Darstellungen Bd. 40) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 2004. 426 pp ISBN 3-525-55740 -X

W-D Hauschild is now one of the senior members of the German Protestant fraternity of church historians. Like most of us, he has given lectures and contributed articles in various places, which he now seeks to bring together and publish in a more durable form. They now appear in the reputable series, sponsored by the Evangelical Church’s Commission for Contemporary History, based in Munich.

Hauschild’s career has been largely engaged in dealing with the tempestuous and often traumatic history of his church throughout the twentieth century. Hence the title – a church in conflict – which reflects very well the failures of German Protestantism in their attempt to steer through the political shoals and social upheavals of the last hundred years.

To be sure, few other churches have been so riven by theological or better still theo-political dissension, assailed by anti-clerical and anti-Christian onslaughts, and forced to abandon much of their former status and support among the general population. Hauschild’s examination of how the institution’s history has been recorded and remembered by his colleagues is both proper and apposite. He thereby addresses the question lurking in the background which Bonhoeffer posed in 1943: “Are we of any use?”

In his opening essay, Hauschild describes the differing approaches currently adopted. Some practitioners argue that the topic of church history should be treated no differently from any other part of experience, using the same empirical, rationalist tools. But others point to the fact that church historians have a dual loyalty: they have to see events in a theologically-based context, conscious of seeking to explain God’s ways to man, and to introduce criteria of evaluation over and above any secular measurement. As guardians of the church’s collective memory, its historians are also much more directly involved in policy debates than their secular counterparts. Therein lie perils, or at any rate conflict.

How the church should relate to the state has been a continuing and often agonizing problem for Germans throughout the century, and indeed even before. Luther’s legacy has been both an ideal but also contentious. The church is called to a critical stance over against all political systems, and should not fall into the trap of overly identifying with any one party programme, or alternatively withdrawing into a private realm of spiritual abstention. Hauschild argues in favour of a “political diaconia” or watchful office for the church, though well aware how difficult this line can be. But its principal task must be to uphold the moral values of society, drawing on the rich vein of similar endeavours of the past. This will keep the church from again succumbing to the temptations or pressures to adapt itself to seductive modern tendencies or trying to keep up with the times.

Coming to terms with the particular events of Germany’s Nazi past is a prerequisite for all church historians of Hauschild’s generation. It imposes an inescapable duty, not only to explain why so many churchmen were led astray, or why others did so little to put a spoke in the wheels, or why only one theologian, Bonhoeffer, joined the anti-Hitler resistance, or why Bonhoeffer’s reputation for many years after 1945 was disputed among his fellow churchmen and colleagues. Should the church, collectively, feel guilt? If so, how should this be expressed?

Hauschild soberly considers these issues. He shows how readily many Germans, especially conservative churchmen, sought to balance out the Nazi crimes with those inflicted on the Germans expelled from the east by the Soviet armies, or the sufferings resulting from British and American air raids. In the aftermath, the post-war political situation and the desire to preserve their institutions outweighed any widespread acceptance of moral guilt for past complicity. These issues also raised serious questions about the future identity of both church and nation. Hauschild argues in favour of an exact reckoning, which avoids sweeping generalizations, such as Goldhagen’s, but which accepts the burden and responsibility for this ill-fated past.

One aspect of the Nazi years for which the German Evangelical Church can take some credit was the forthright statement issued in May 1934, known as the Barmen Declaration, which resolutely affirmed the theological principles of the newly-established Confessing Church in opposition to the pro-Nazi factions. The Declarations spelled out the limits of the church’s willingness to accede to the new regime’s demands, and in fact became the basis for all future non-compliance with Nazi ambitions to subordinate the church entirely. Hauschild devotes several chapters to a description of the Barmen Declaration and its effects, both during and after the Nazi years.

His subsequent chapters deal with the post-1945 history of this church. To be sure, in 1945 its surviving leaders had their freedom from state control and could determine their own future. But as Hauschild shows, there were still so many unresolved and disputed interpretations of where the church should go and how its polity should be formulated that his book’s title continued to be truly earned. Unfortunately, due in part to the political divisions imposed on Germany, these issues have still not been fully resolved. The German Evangelical Church’s identity, both before and after the political upheavals of 1989-1990, and the subsequent reunification of the country, are still a matter for debate, even at times of conflict. The legacy of the past therefore still requires to be looked through. But its institutional survival now seems assured. More problematic is the nature of its witness both in Germany and to the wider world. In this regard, Hauschild believes church historians have an important role to play. They are in fact the guardians of the church’s past and in some sense its conscience. Given the disasters of previous years, their duty to tell the truth without distortion is all the more significant. The essays collected in this volume will undoubtedly contribute towards this goal.

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1c) Serhii Plokhy and Frank E.Sysyn, Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine. Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press. 2003. 216 pp. ISBN 1-895571-45-6(bound); 1-895571-36-7 (pbk.) ed. Thomas Bremer, Religion und Nation. Die Situation der Kirchen in der Ukraine. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. 2003. 147 pp. ISBN 3-447-04843-3.

The early history of Scotland was once described as murder tempered by theology. The more recent history of the Ukraine could also qualify. No other part of Europe during the past hundred years has been so convulsed by turbulent political events, with horrendous and massive losses of life and property. In fact, as a crossroads between East and West, the Ukraine has long been involved in a continuous struggle to obtain independence and identity. In its repeated attempts to achieve a national revival, the local churches have played a significant role, both as inheritors of past traditions, but also as active participants in fashioning new intellectual and ideological agendas, as they relate to the indigenous religious populations.

The complexity and conflictual character of much of the Ukrainian ecclesiastical scene has long deterred western scholars from any evaluative surveys. In fact, the most comprehensive account is by the German scholar, Friedrich Heyer, who recently updated his initial study written fifty years ago. So it is all the more welcome to have the short analysis by two former Ukrainian scholars now resident in Canada, which will help to sort out some of the entangled religious and political questions of the current period.

Because of its earlier history, the Ukraine was always multi-ethnic and hence pluralistic in its religious loyalties. At the same time, its rulers – then and now – have sought to mobilize religious forces to advance their particular cause. The Czarist monarchs promoted the Moscow Patriarchate of the Orthodox Church, while in the western parts of the country, the Uniate Church, which is familiarly but misleadingly known as the Greek Catholic Church, owing its allegiance to the Pope in Rome, predominated under the sponsorship of the Austro-Hungarian emperors. In the twentieth century, further religio-political alliances resulted during and after the first world war. The rise of Communism in the Soviet Union and the subsequent persecutions led to the growth of local groupings such as the breakaway Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox church. During the Nazi occupation, both this splinter group and the Greek Catholics sought to regain ground. But after the Soviet victory, both were liquidated, and the remnants compulsorily amalgamated under the Moscow-dominated Patriarchate

After 1989, the Greek Catholics almost spontaneously resurrected themselves and reclaimed their former churches and constituents. At the same time, another section of the Orthodox community sought to re-establish its own patriarch in Kiev. But for political reasons they refused to acknowledge the autocephalous group, and both are spurned by those who still acknowledge Moscow’s ecclesiastical authority.

These internal struggles, as the authors make clear, are intimately related to the different concepts of national autonomy upheld by rival political groups. Some look back to the past as a model for the revival of Ukrainian cultural and political independence, seeking to promote the Orthodox Church as the upholder of a specific Ukrainian destiny. But the political record of the autocephalists during the second world war has still left a bitter legacy. On the other side, the long subordination to the Moscow Patriarchate, with its frequent execution of the Soviet leaders’ demands, has also caused deep resentments. For example, after 1989, a large number of Orthodox priests and congregations switched over, or back, to the Greek Catholic Uniates. But these Uniates, in turn, seek to establish their independence from their Polish neighbours, who maintain the Latin rite and equally see their Roman connection as a vital part of the Polish national revival. Since there is a great intermingling of these respective populations, and no clear acceptance of any one model for national resurgence, the result is still one of unresolved tensions and religious divisions.

Plokhy and Sysyn provide ample evidence of the close interaction between state building and religious movements. The politicians seek to enlist, or even to exploit, the churches in pursuit of their particular view of national identity. This however still remains illusory. These same problems are explored in the collection of essays, edited by Thomas Bremer, which resulted from a Berlin conference in 2001. These authors also stress the need for western scholars to be fully acquainted with the origins and development of each individual Ukrainian church in order to understand its particular contribution to the task of forging religious and political identity. They also provide a useful multi-lingual bibliography.

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2a) Thomas Brechenmacher, “Pope Pius XI, Eugenio Pacelli, and the Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany 1933-1939: New sources from the Vatican archives” in Bulletin of the German Historical Institute,London, Vol. XXVII, no. 2, November 2005, pp 17-45.

Brechenmacher, who is now preparing a definitive edition of the Nuncio’s reports from Berlin in the early period of Nazi rule, has undertaken a parallel study to that of Gerhard Besier (Reviewed in our December 2005 Newsletter). In this extended article he looks specifically at the Vatican’s stance towards the persecution of the German Jews, and comes to very similar conclusions: “It should be asked whether, given the situation in Germany, the official Vatican statements were not too late, and too hesitant. . . The Holy Office wasted two years in endless, learned discussions and scholastic nit-picking, while in Germany the persecution of the Jews was getting worse by the month. . . Concern about the survival of Church life in Germany dominated Rome’s actions: everything else was of secondary importance.” (p.43).

2b) Theo Salemink, “Bischöfe protestieren gegen die Deportation der niederländischen Juden 1942” in Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 116, no. 1, 2005, p.63-77

A useful evaluation of the protests made by the Dutch bishops against the Nazis’ deportation of the Jews, and how this topic has been treated over the past fifty years in the historiography, both Catholic and Protestant. Salemink warns against exaggerated myths, by pointing out that only 190 Catholic Jews were in fact deported as a result of the protests.

2c) Alister Chapman, “Secularisation and the ministry of John R.W.Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950-1970 in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 56, no 3, July 2005, pp. 496-513.

Alister Chapman has given us a valuable contribution to understanding the impact of evangelicalism in the Church of England in the post-1945 situation. He examines the work of one of the leading figures, John Stott, Rector of a popular up-scale church in London’s west end. Contrary to the widespread losses suffered by the church in these post-war years, Stott successfuly built up a thriving parish with vigorous lay participation. His teaching was traditionally evangelical. but he provided an intellectually robust apologetic, using such popular props as the works of C.S.Lewis to give a fresh emphasis for the intellectual viability of Christian belief

Chapman suggests that Stott’s success at All Souls was due to his presentation of a clear message along with a willingness to interact with the broader culture and some of its values. Unlike some parts of world Protestantism, this was no world-denying anti-modern stance. Of course, the hoped-for revival, sparked by Billy Graham’s crusades, did not take place. And Stott himself expressed disappointment and frustration. On the other hand, his growing reputation world-wide meant that he was less and less present in the parish, and finally he had to hand it over to a successor. Here too his church had to contend with the increasingly anti-authoritarian stance among the youth of the 1960s. Stott expressed alarm at the “steady progress of secularisation, even paganisation” But these gloomy predictions were only partly true. In Chapman’s views evangelicalism in England still flourishes.

With every best wish to you all for the New Year
John Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Books reviewed in 2004

Bergen, Doris ed The Sword of the Lord. Military Chaplains September
Besier, Gerhard Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland December
Bottum, Joseph and Dalin, David, eds The Pius War September
Gerdes, Uta Okumenisches Solidarität mit christlichen und jüdischen
Verfolgten. Die CIMADE in Vichy-Frankreich 1940-44 November
Greenberg, Irving For the Sake of Heaven and Earth June
Gruber, Mark Journey back to Eden December
Hauerwas, Stanley Performing the Faith. Bonhoeffer and Nonviolence April
Haynes, Stephen The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon April
Hockenos, Matthew A Church Divided. German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past February
Leugers, Antonia ed Berlin, Rosenstrasse 2-4 November
Lewis, Don ed. Christianity reborn May
Merkle, John ed Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Judaism June
Palm, Dirk Wir sind doch Brüder. Der evangelische Kirchentag 1949-61 January
Ruff, Mark TheWayward Flock. Catholic Youth in Postwar West Germany March
Slane, Craig Bonhoeffer as Martyr April
Spicer. Kevin Resisting the Third Reich. Catholic Clergy in Berlin September
Staritz, Katharina Dokumentation Band 1 1903-1942. January
Steele, Michael Christianity, the Other and the Holocaust October
Tent, James In the Shadow of the Holocaust November
Tischner, Wolfgang Katholische Kirche in der SBZ/DDR 1945-51 March
Tittmann, Harold Inside the Vatican of Pius XII March
Ueberschaer, Ellen Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt October

Article:
Missions to Israel: The Rise and Fall of Protestant Mssions to the Jews 1800-2000
July/August