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

Dear Friends,

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland
Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
Des sich wundert alle Welt,
Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.

—Martin Luther 1524

Contents

1) Book reviews:

a) Besier, Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland
b) Gruber, Journey Back to Eden

2) Reply to review of A.Leugers, Rosenstrasse 2-4

3) Book notes.

a) P. Cabanel, Les Protestants et la Republique
b) A.Porter, ed., Imperial Horizons of British Missions
c) W.Brandmüller, Holocaust in der Slovakei

4) Journal articles

a) B.da Silva, Peace, Pastors and Politics
b) C.Marsh, Russian Orthodox Christians today
c) M.Menke, German Catholics and National Identity
d) F.Latour, The Holy See and Turkey during the First World War

5) Research in progress: J.D.Wyneken, Post-1945 German churches

1a) Gerhard Besier, in Zusammenarbeit mit Francesca Piombo, Der Heilige Stuhl und Hitler-Deutschland. Die Fazination des Totalitären. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2004 415pp ISBN 3-421005814-8

Forty years ago a young Swiss playwright wrote a scathing attack on the war-time policieso f Pope Pius XII and his failure to protest the Nazi mass murders of the Jews. Ever since, controversy has raged, usually with more heat than light. A major factor has been the refusal – so far – of the Vatican to open its files for this pontificate, which has encouraged Pius’ critics to believe that the true story is being suppressed. To be sure, the Vatican did authorize the publication of eleven weighty volumes covering the war years. But since they were mainly in Italian, they remained unread. The carping criticisms went on as before.

Two years ago, the Vatican authorities finally got around to mobilizing sufficient resources to open part of the holdings for the reign of Pope Pius XI, i.e. from 1922 to 1939. These documents concern the Vatican’s dealings with Germany, most of which were handled by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, who, in 1939, became Pius XII. Consequently, if only partially, and only for the early years of the Nazi regime, we now have access to the documentary evidence for this crucial initial period.

Gerhard Besier, now Director of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research into Totalitarianism in Dresden, has been one of the few scholars who have taken advantage of this new opening. (To my knowledge, no scholar from Britain or North America is so engaged). Besier was the pupil of the late Professor Klaus Scholder of Tübingen, whose magnificent two volumes on the Churches in the Third Reich were sadly cut short by his early death. (Besier helped to edit and complete Volume II, and later went on to write Volume III, which was published in 2001). One of the main features of Volume I was a highly critical and much disputed account of the making of the Reich Concordat of 1933 between the new Nazi government and the Roman Catholic Church. These negotiations were largely conducted by Pacelli personally. So Besier was already alerted to the controversial debates this ill-fated treaty gave rise to. Hence he was eager to see whether the newly-released documents would confirm or refute the earlier contentions about the Reich Concordat.

He is greatly to be praised for realizing that this episode needs to be put in its wider setting. His study begins with the evolution of Catholic diplomacy and practice from the turn of the century, but then concentrates on the relations with Germany from 1920 onwards. In so doing he replaces the earlier accounts of Stewart Stehlin in English, Emma Fattorini in Italian or Klaus Scholder in German. His study runs parallel to that of Peter Godman, who teaches in Rome, and whose work is drawn primarily from the files of the Holy Office rather than the Secretariat of State.

Besier states that these new documents offer no really sensational revelations, though they do bring certain surprises. (It can be expected that the same will be found when, finally, the documents from 1939 onwards are made public. This fact will undoubtedly disappoint the whole flock of Pius-bashers whose minds have long since been made up). Besier’s researches are meticulous and scholarly. He marshals the evidence and lays out the essential character of papal policy – even though it is clear that he, as a Protestant, has little sympathy for the Vatican’s presuppositions about how the world should be governed.

The leaders of the Catholic Church could not fail to see that the first world war had been a highly damaging catastrophe for all the churches. The outburst of rival nationalisms, the mutually exclusive claims to have divine approval for their war aims, the seemingly endless casualties and the rapid decline of personal and public morality, were all grave indications of a world-wide moral disorder. The Vatican therefore saw its prime duty to seek to restore peace between and within the nations, to use its influence to stabilize the postwar regimes, to reconcile the former enemies and to heal the wounds of war. Its resources for this vast task were, however, pitifully limited. Fifty years earlier, the new Italian state had seized all the former Papal States and reduced the territory of the Holy See to a small segment of Rome’s inner city. The Vatican had no military or financial power. It was therefore entirely dependent on the mobilization of its spiritual and diplomatic resources. Inevitably there was always a painful gap between its high expectations and the actual results. This was to be a constant feature of papal diplomacy throughout the twentieth century.

The Vatican’s strategy throughout the continent was to seek to achieve internationally- and legally-binding treaties with each state, in the belief that these would strengthen the forces of moderation, and serve as a barrier against the kind of revolutionary and anti-clerical violence which had already seized control in the Soviet Union. In countries such as Austria, Poland and Spain, where the population was largely Catholic, such treaties or Concordats could be easily obtained, even though critics saw them as perpetuating Catholic privileges. In Germany, where the Catholics were a minority, this task proved harder. As Papal Nuncio, first in Bavaria and then in Berlin, Pacelli laboured throughout the 1920s, seeking to find a basis for agreement. He failed, largely due to opposition from the socialist and communist parties.

He had more success on the provincial level. In 1924 the Bavarian parliament signed its local Concordat with the Vatican, paradoxically at the very time when Munich was becoming the leading city in the rise of National Socialism. In 1929 a further agreement was reached with Prussia and in 1932 with Baden. But far more significant was the Vatican’s success in 1929 in reaching a new understanding with the Italian fascist state in the Lateran Treaty. This ended decades of hostility and regulated the legal position of the Holy See. Besier rightly points out the importance of this agreement, which in effect gave the church’s blessing to Mussolini’s totalitarian rule, but which also restored the Vatican’s international standing as a significant diplomatic entity.

The Nazi seizure of power in January 1933 altered the situation abruptly. One of Hitler’s early moves was to send Goering down to Rome to take soundings about re-opening negotiations with the Vatican. Hitler’s motives were purely opportunistic. By such means he hoped to thwart the possibility of any unified Catholic opposition to his new regime, and at the same time to add to his credibility by dealing with Europe’s oldest diplomatic institution. For their part, the leaders of the papal Curia, especially Pacelli, by this time advanced to being in effect the Pope’s foreign minister, could not resist the opportunity to achieve the long-desired goal of a Reich Concordat. Within a few months, it was both signed and ratified. Critics of the Vatican, including Scholder, have long regarded this step as a culpable betrayal. The Pope’s willlingness to sign an agreement with the new totalitarian leader, the abandonment and collapse of Germany’s Catholic Centre Party, and the failure to demand measures for the protection of human rights and of ethnic minorities, such as the Jews, are all part of this critique. Besier avoids invective. But he also shows that the Vatican’s hasty conclusion of this Concordat cannot be ascribed to illusions about Nazi policies. As early as Hitler’s abortive coup in 1923, Pacelli had been warning his Roman counterparts about the dangers which this movement, with its political and racial radicalism and its vulgar and violent propaganda campaigns, constituted for the church. The risks were acknowledged. Why then were they taken?

Besier, like Godman, downplays the role of personalities. Of course, Pacelli was eager to see the completion of his work in Germany. But this was only part of a world-wide policy consistently pursued under two different popes. There were other factors, both positive and negative, which affected the Vatican’s stance. In Germany, the fears of the hierarchy lest another Kulturkampf be started was offset by the remarkable success of the Nazis in recruiting young Catholics to their cause, despite the bishops’ warnings. The terms offered were far better than those put forward before. On the other hand, the splintering of the Catholic Centre Party left the Vatican without the backing it might have expected. The illusion that being in power would cure Nazism of its radicalism was certainly a factor. On balance, the risk seemed worth taking. Besier might have quoted the remark made by a sceptical Pacelli to the British envoy: “Certainly some of the Concordat’s clauses will be broken. But not all of them, and not all at the same time”

Such pessimism was soon enough justified. Besier’s account of the subsequent exacerbation in the Vatican’s relations with Germany covers well-known ground. Too late, the Curia realized that it would be impossible to admit its mistake. It would not even be able to send a stronger Nuncio to Berlin. And when it did try to help the Nazis’ victims, especially refugees, its efforts were thwarted and blocked even by supposedly Catholic countries. Frustrated by the Nazis’ increasing encroachments, and by now convinced of the regime’s implacable hostility, the Vatican decided in 1937 to issue a warning Encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge. It was smuggled into Germany and read from all pulpits. Its tone was critical but not so sharp as to provoke a revocation of the Concordat. Nazism was not explicitly mentioned, and even the condemnation of racism was wordy and imprecise. Quite possibly for this reason, the Encyclical’s impact was minimal. German Catholics continued to believe they could be good Nazis and still remain true to their faith. The Vatican did not dare to disillusion them, if only because numerous clergy continued to believe that Nazism could be purged of its heretical extremism and settle down to be a valued authoritarian system, uniting with the church in a strongly anti-Communist stand.

Privately Pacelli expressed his strong dislike of the “scoundrel dictator” Hitler, but publicly he had to be more discreet. The Vatican’s impotence was only the more clearly shown when, in March 1938 the Austrian bishops joyfully welcomed the Anschluss with Nazi Germany. In the following months, the Curia watched Germany’s militant diplomacy and war-like preparations with growing dismay. As its senior and most experienced diplomat, Pacelli found the ominous similarities to 1914 more than depressing. Both before and after his election as Pope in March 1939, he threw himself into enormous but ultimately frustrated efforts to save Europe’s peace. With the Bolsheviks now strongly in power in the Soviet Union, with the Nazis showing themselves to be Bolsheviks of another sort, with Italian Fascism drawing ever closer to its northern neighbour, and with the Catholic state of Poland overthrown by Nazi armies, the prospects for the new Pope were inauspicious, even desolate.

Besier’s study of these ill-fated developments is sound and fair. He rejects the wishful thinking of the anti-papal critics, while maintaining a more balanced assessment of papal policy. It is much to be hoped that he will soon be in a position to do the same for the even more disputed Vatican policies of the Second World War, as soon as the long overdue release of these Vatican documents takes place.

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1b) Mark Gruber, OSB, Journey back to Eden. My life and times among the Desert Fathers, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2003. 208 pp. ISBN 1-57075-433-0

This, I believe, the first time our Newsletter has reviewed a book about the Coptic Church. So let me warmly recommend Fr. Mark Gruber’s lively and readable account of the year in the late 1980s which he spent visiting several of the Coptic monasteries in Egypt. Originally intending to gather material for his anthropological PhD thesis, Fr. Gruber became so immersed in the life of his subjects that he was more and more drawn into a personal voyage of self-discovery. His diary is therefore both the story of his spiritual pilgrimage and a description of his various hosts, their lives and liturgies, and their contributions to the wider church.

The Desert Fathers of the Coptic Orthodox Church can claim to be the founders of Christian monasticism. From the fourth century down to our own day they have continuously inspired successive generations of Christians. Despite all the political and military upheavals which have swept over Egypt, the Copts have steadfastly upheld their faithful witness in the midst of an assertive Islamic world. The desert monasteries are the spiritual resource centres for the Coptic laity, who honour their heroic inhabitants, count on their prayers, and visit them in incessant pilgrimages.

Fr Gruber, who is an American Benedictine monk, writes with enormous admiration for his hosts. Nevertheless he is fully aware that the cultural differences between Coptic Egypt and the post-Christian West are so great that even the most respectful treatment of the religion of the one by the other will always be problematic. Certainly his reception, both as a Catholic and as an American, proved to be very friendly – much more so, he notes, than he received from the Greek Orthodox authorities in the Sinai desert. The only adjustment he was required to make was to grow a beard! Less easy was the strenuous liturgical life-style, when the monks rose at 2.30 a.m. and began morning prayer at 3. The singing of 70 psalms and other hymns lasted until 6 a.m. – all the while standing. Then followed the daily Mass with its clouds of incense until 9 or 9.30. Only after this daily spiritual nourishment, said and sung with great sincerity, reverence and devotion, were food and drink allowed. Because the Coptic services are conducted in their own ancient and unique language, the sense of history is inescapable – a burden to the modern mind, but joyfully embraced by communities who live in and with history on a daily basis.

Gruber began his stay in the best-known monastery of St Macarius, which was once, and for centuries, the greatest and most popular monastery in Egypt. But with the shifting fortunes of the Coptic Church, St Macarius slowly declined until, by the 1960s, it nearly dissolved. However, in a dramatic turnaround, the monastery was rescued by an influx of young monks, who restored the venerable House almost at once to its prominent role at the centre of Coptic spiritual life and monastic institutions.

To the average educated Egyptian, these monasteries are nothing more than irrelevant relics of a bygone past. But Gruber shows that the Coptic community still possesses the vitality and faithfulness to keep the tradition going, despite or possibly because of the astringent asceticism of the monastic life. Their emphasis on individual perfection and holiness gave the impression of being much more devout than Catholic communities in the United States. Certainly their pre-dawn liturgies, unchanged century after century, made a powerful witness in their presumption that the passing years of history are unimportant when the risen Christ is there in the midst of the praying community. And their ability to turn this ancient tradition into something living and organic for the present day is a remarkable achievement, repeated in each new generation.

Coptic Christians are well aware of their minority status in Egypt. They are muted, because of the endemic danger of oppression. But at the same time they have preserved the church’s missionary spirit and therefore hope. They are squeezed between a great Gospel missionary desire and a great dread of Islam. It is a recipe for apocalyptic expectations. Hence the continuing attraction over the centuries of the desert and its monasteries as places of refuge, but also of renewal.

The desert represents the province of God on the edge of the empire of men. Despite its harshness and aridity, its very emptiness invites the idea that here men, and particularly monks, can find the presence of their God. Not all deserts are flat, but can include rocky or even mountainous outcrops, as in Sinai. There can be found the caves of hermits, such as that of St. Anthony, who is reputed to have received the original impulse for the solitary and holy life. From his remote and even now inaccessible refuge in the desert, not far from the Red Sea, sprang the whole eremitical and monastic tradition, which has been maintained for so many centuries as the source of spiritual insight and inspiration. This is what Fr Gruber observed among the faithful Copts, whose redoubtable witness is here most sympathetically conveyed to a western audience.

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2) Reply to Review of Rosenstrasse 2-4 (see last month’s Newsletter. item 1b)

Dr Joachim Neander writes from Krakow, Poland, as one of the co-authors of this book, to send us the following comments:

“I have to take issue with your review for the following reasons:
1) Antonia Leugers gives ample evidence that Catholic intervention through Bishop Wienken’s meeting with Eichmann to have the interned Jewish/Christian husbands released was ineffective. The review incorrectly hedged on this point.
2) Another of the contributors, Jana Leichsenring (not mentioned by name) gives ample evidence that a communications network existed amongst racially mixed couples in Berlin. But it was all top secret, so it is not surprising that no written evidence can be found.
3) Regarding the returnees sent back from Auschwitz. To be sure Nathan Stoltzfus first wrote about this group, but in this anthology it was I, Joachim Neander, who examined the question. I pointed out that 12 of the returnees were from the Grosse Hamburger Strasse detention camp, and that at least 8 of these were NOT married. So the review was inaccurate to suggest that their wives were among the vocal protesters. What is more, I proved that, in the course of the _Fabrikaktion_at the end of February, more than 120 Jews from racially-mixed marriages were deported to Auschwitz. This fact throws strong doubt on the RSHA’s so-called exemption clauses.
4) I also showed that this _Fabrikaktion_ took place in a typical “push-and-pull” framework. I used Auschwitz documents, which were already known but never considered in this context, to prove that the demands of the Auschwitz workforce could only be fulfilled if the RSHA deported several thousand Jews from racially-mixed marriages. This proves that the RSHA did not take seriously its own deportation guidelines with their exemption clauses.
5) In his contribution to this book, Nathan Stoltzfus commented on the important Lehfeldt document, published here in full for the first time. He showed that the statement “The Nazi decision to exempt, temporarily, Jews in mixed marriages was already in place” is too sweeping and does not tally with the facts. The exemption clauses, in practice, were only one of the many cover-ups used by the Nazis.
6) I also showed, from German sources, that the protests of some (not Œthe’) French Catholic bishops indeed temporarily stopped the deportations. This led to delays that the Germans were never able to make up. In the end, this saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews from France. One should not play down this fact, even if admittedly, the deportations to Auschwitz continued.
7) The Dutch and French bishops’ protests were not at all “belated”. The bishops protested at the very beginning of the deportations from their dioceses. How could they have protested earlier?
8) It is a truism to say that “heroic defiance would have to have happened much earlier” than in February/March 1943. Germany celebrates the July 20, 1944 conspirators, who – unsuccessfully – took action one and a half years later than the Berlin women. Non-violent successful resistance by women, however, does not fit into the master narrative of German culture, where “men make history” and a hero must be a tragic hero, such as Siegfried.
9) All of us collected material which challenged the prevalent view of the Rosenstrasse events, which holds that the Nazis did not intend to deport Jews from mixed marriages. But the basic message of our book is to challenge this opinion. That should have been expressed in a scholarly review. None of us would have dared to pronounce something like “the women’s or the Church protests could have changed the course of history”. One should not imply in a review that we said this. But is it, in fact, inconceivable that the women’s protests could have slowed the pace of the “course of history” at least in this very limited aspect? And if they only saved a single man’s life – did they not “save the whole world” as an old Jewish saying goes?”

Joachim Neander
email: jneander@web.de

3a) Patrick Cabanel, Les Protestants et la Republique, Brussels: Editions complex 2000 ISBN 2-87027-780-6

Professor Cabanel is a distinguished historian of French Protestantism who teaches in Toulouse. His latest book is a short account of Protestant political attitudes over the past 140 years. He seeks to account for the fact that this small minority of only 1% of the population has a totally disproportionate place in the leadership corps of French governments. Can this be due to some ideological linkage between republicanism and the Calvinist religion, with its commitment to freedom, equality and justice? Or is it due to historical circumstances where the memory among the French Protestant Huguenots
of their persecution by the monarchy made them valiant in their fight against all authoritarian policies and regimes. Or is it due to their support of the republic’s deliberate anti-Catholic stance, both before and after the disestanblishment of the Roman Church and the abolition of the Concordat? Or was it due to a determination to defend minority rights, including those of Dreyfus and the Jews under Vichy? Cabanal follows these threads, and depicts how Protestants have been found in both the right and left of the political spectrum, giving their names and contributions in full. Their geographical spread is also important. The Alsatian Protestants differ from those in the Auvergne. A stimulating brief account which will help foreigners to understand the French Protestant milieu in all its variety of political expressions.

3b) ed. A. Porter, The Imperial Horizons of British Protestant Missions, 1880-1914. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans 2003 250 pp. ISBN 0-8028-6087-7

This useful collection of articles discusses the relationship of British imperialism and the missionary movement in the years immediately before the outbreak of war in 1914. This is missionary history from the top down, but examines the evidence not only from the perspective of the Empire’s homeland, but also from the periphery. The results contradict the widely-held view of secular, or Marxist, historians that religion was a mere tool in the hands of an exploitative capitalist imperialism. On the contrary, the contributors are nearly all concerned to point up the complexities and ambiguities of the attitudes of missionaries to the ruling structures of the British Empire. Of course, they sought to take advantage of the pax britannica, but were increasingly affected by the close contact with the “natives”. The attempt by one missionary society leader to unite all his colleagues behind a united loyalty to the Empire fell apart because of the continuing differences within the missionary ranks. Evangelicals relied far more on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, while the “high-church” missions were offended by the lax theological discipline of their free church partners. Moreover, the bishops at home were increasingly reluctant to heed the call of the empire, fearing that they would lose their best candidates to distant outposts. And the growth of the ecumenical spirit, and of higher biblical criticism, also led to divisions which hampered any unanimity on imperial questions. In the end, these varieties of missionary responses helped to begin the undermining of the ideological justifications for the British empire, which only accelerated after the disasters of the first world war.

3c) Walter Brandmüller, Holocaust in der Slovakei und katholische Kirche
Using the now available records of the Vatican, as well as other Slovakian and German sources, Brandmüller traces the reactions of the Catholic Church, and especially the Vatican Secretariat of State, towards the persecution and deportation of the Jews from Slovakia during the six short years of this nation’s existence from 1939-1945. He examines these documents in detail to show that the criticisms advanced by Fr. J.Morley, and more sweepingly by D.Goldhagen, are essentially misguided. He shows that the Vatican authorities were dismayed that the Slovakian government, headed by a priest, Josef Tiso, would take measures against the Jews which offended all human rights, and serious compromised the image of Slovakia as a Catholic country. They repeatedly sought to uphold these principles and reminded the obsscurantist Slovakian politicians of their duty. But Brandmüller cannot deny that these interventions were only partially successful. He does not quote the most apposite remark made by Msgr Tardini: “It is a tragedy that the President of Slovakia is a priest. All the world knows that the Holy See cannot bring Hitler to heel. But who would think that we can’t even control a priest?”

Articles:

4a) B. da Silva, Peace, Pastors and Politics, in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 47, Summer 2005, pp. 503-529. Fifteen years after the overthrow of the Communist regime in the former East Germany, Brendan da Silva has revisited the discussion over the role of the Protestant pastors in bringing about a peaceful revolution, or alternatively in helping to provide the regime with some stability. He had the advantage of being able to get to a larger number of archives, and to interview a few of the main actors. So he is able to refute the more extreme opinions on both sides. Yes, several leading clerics did seek to maintain a conservative stability, and even co-operated with the Stasi to do so. But, yes, the younger pastors often sought to find ways of expressing the wider popular discontent by organizing unconventional activities in their church buildings, which later on became the focus points of protests. Only a minority served the Stasi as informers, but the bishops tried to keep the lid on any open opposition – in vain. In all, the church did not deserve the title of heroic system breaker, but neither was it suborned to be merely subservient to the Communist rulers.

4b) Christopher Marsh, Russian Orthodox Christians and their orientation towards church and state, in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 47, Summer 2005, pp. 545-561.

A valuable account of the changes in state policy towards the churches in Russia since 1990, and a sociological survey of the religious, civic and political orientations of Russian Orthodox Christians today. Marsh finds that only the staunchest believers look to the church to provide them with political guidance, or to provide answers about social problems. His survey shows that the vast majority of Russians do not view the Orthodox Church as a significant source of social improvement. But, he holds, there is still a relationship between church and state, or rather only a thin wall of separation. But the Orthodox Church is not always a supporter of the state, as can be seen in its active part in the Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’.

4c) Martin Menke, Thy Will be done. German Catholics and National Identity in the twentieth century, in Catholic Historical Review, Vol 91, April 2005, p.300ff.

How could Catholic Germans reconcile the conflicting demands of their nationalism and their faith? These struggles were particularly acute when Germany’s political regimes changed so dramatically, and often for the worse, during the past hundred years. Menke examines the consequent political dilemmas and the moral problems which arose, but suggests that many Catholics were conscious of the difficulties of finding out what God’s will actually was. He uses the examples of Alfred Delp and Willi Graf, both executed by Hitler, to show how high-minded Catholics responded to the ideological pressures of Nazi nationalism.

4d) F.Latour, Les relations entre le Saint-Siége et la sublime porte a l’épreuve du génocides chrétiens d’Orient pendant la grand guerre, in Guerres Mondiales, no 219, July 2005, pp 31 ff.

The relationship between the Holy See and the Ottoman Empire during the First World War was delicate. Even though the Catholic Church had benefited ever since the sixteenth century from the guarantees that the “Capitulations” had offered, this was no longer true once the Ottoman Empire went to war against France, the traditional protector of the Eastern Catholics.. Papal diplomacy had to adjust. Benedict XV tried to square the circle in defending the Christians, including the Armenians who were the victims of a real genocide, and rescuing them wherever possible, while at the same time maintaining close contacts with the Turkish government. This was done to protect these same Christians and to preserve the politico-religious interests of the Catholic Church in the East. The dilemmas for the Holy See over how to respond to the Armenian genocide set a pattern which was to be repeated thirty years later in eastern Europe.

5) Research in progress:

J.K.Wyneken, Concordia University, Portland, Oregon writes:

My research interests center primarily on the relationship between Christian belief/activism and international relations during the twentieth century. My dissertation, Driving out the Demons: German Churches, the Western Allies, and Memory in Postwar Germany, 1945-1952, focuses on how the activism of the German Protestant and Catholic churches influenced the course of the Allied military occupation of Germany, and how this reflected the churches’ development of their official memory of the Nazi past. It is my contention that the relations between the Allies and the churches, especially their often strained relations over denazification, war crimes, Displaced Persons, and Prisoner of War policies, effectively internationalized the formation of memory about the Nazi past and simultaneously weakened the effectiveness and appeal of these important Allied policies. The support given to the German churches by international Christian observers and organizations also played an important part in this process, as did the steady readjustment of Allied priorities away from punishing Germans and towards resisting Soviet communism that developed between 1945 and 1952. My long range research goals include a broad study of the importance of Christian activism in the global context of the Cold War, and a study that examines the popular understanding of religious resistance to Nazism from 1945 to the present day.

With all best wishes for the Christmas season,
Yours sincerely,
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

To mark the November Days of Remembrance:

Jesus bleibet meine Freude,
meines Herzens Trost und Saft,
Jesus wehret allem Leide,
er ist meines Lebens Kraft.
meiner Augen Lust und Sonne,
meiner Seele Schatz und Wonne;
darum lass ich Jesum nicht,
aus dem Herzen und Gesicht.
(from a Bach Cantata)

Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) Gerdes, Okumenische Solidarität
b) Leugers ed. Berlin, Rosenstrasse 2-4
c) Tent, In the shadow of the Holocaust

2) Journal articles:

a) Crang, Compulsory church parades
b) Sykes, Popular religion in the Black Country

1a) Uta Gerdes, Okumenische Solidarität mit christlichen und jüdischen Verfolgten. Die CIMADE in Vichy-Frankreich 1940-1944. (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Darstellungen Bd 41). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2005 ISBN 3-52555741-8. 380pp.

French Protestants are very conscious of their community’s Huguenot history and of the persecution they suffered for their beliefs from successive French monarchs in earlier centuries. This still leads them to express their solidarity with victims of state oppression. In the circumstances of the Second World War, this was the main motive which very rapidly led to the mobilization of concern among French Protestants for those persons suffering from Nazi political, racial or religious persecution. Especially among young French Protestants, the desire to help led to their joint efforts to create the Comite inter-mouvements auprés des evacués, commonly known as CIMADE. Drawn from the YMCA, the YWCA, the Scout movements of both sexes, and from the French Student Christian movement, these young people undertook a mission of social assistance as a sign of their Christian witness and dedication. They were not to know how quickly this commitment would lead them to become involved in far more demanding and dangerous endeavours, which broadened their horizons and challenged their faith. But their efforts to assist the Nazis’ victims, both Christian and Jewish, deserve to be recognized as a paradigm of Christian growth and obedience in an age of menacing ideologies, and as a small but valiant contribution to the story of the Second World War’s resistance movements.

Dr Uta Gerdes’ scholarly and valuable account of CIMADE’s activities deserves high praise for a variety of reasons. Firstly, she brings this story to a wider, German-speaking, readership. Although CIMADE’s humanitarian record has been extensively set out in French accounts of the war, German readers have only now begun to look beyond their own nation’s debates and controversies for or against participation in resistance against Nazism. Secondly, Dr Gerdes has taken advantage of the passage of time to avoid the kind of heroizing treatment of earlier years, but instead to give us a critical reconstruction of the activities of this small Christian group in the context of their contemporary setting. At the same time, she notes particularly their especial contribution to the growth of international and inter-faith understanding and service. Thirdly, she draws out in new ways the significance of the co-operation between various international church agencies in the vital tasks of rescuing those persecuted by the Nazis. Finally she offers an analysis of the importance of these experiences for the young women involved, and the extent to which they became empowered to take a larger role in the church, as well as to challenge its male-dominated power structures in subsequent years.

CIMADE was formed in late 1939 in the first instance to look after those persons from Alsace evacuated to other parts of France after the outbreak of the war. But its mission was soon extended to those civilians interned as non-French aliens. Some 25,000 emigrants, refugees or fugitives from the Spanish Civil War were now rounded up and herded together in overcrowded and unsanitary camps in remote areas, such as Gurs in the Pyrenees and Rivesaltes near the Mediterranean coast. CIMADE was only one of the voluntary agencies which sought to alleviate the harshness of these internees’ plight, in what rapidly became a notorious situation of hardship and squalor. But CIMADE successfully sought to be allowed to establish in each camp a foyer where their workers could provide some comfort and cheers to the inmates. Their particular objective was to assist any Protestant detainees and to provide opportunities for educational and cultural programmes with a specific religious tone.

The defeat of France in June 1940, the division of the country into occupied and non-occupied areas, the establishment of the Vichy regime and the imposition of German-dictated policies towards foreigners, refugees and internees obliged CIMADE to concentrate its resources on the needs of the internment camps’ inmates. Their situation was soon to be made even more demanding in October 1940 when a large contingent of 10,000 Germans of Jewish origin was forcibly transferred to these camps in southern France. CIMADE’s social diaconate was now obliged to extend its services to these Germans, particularly to the minority among them who were Protestants. But their workers always tried to be inclusive, and made their facilities, their libraries, and their cultural and educational events available to all in the spirit of international and interconfessional friendship. Their mission was to meet as many of the physical and spiritual needs of the inmates as they could. The surviving evidence is that they brought a touch of humanity and civility to the often downtrodden and despairing prisoners.

The resources for this task were never enough. But CIMADE’s leaders had deliberately established links to their international counterparts, especially to those like the YMCA, YWCA and World Student Christian Federation who had their main European offices just over the Swiss border in Geneva. In addition CIMADE was actively supported by the newly-created of the World Council of Churches (in process of formation), whose Dutch General Secretary, Visser ‘t Hooft, proved to be a tower of strength. The refugee secretary of this agency, Dr Adolf Freudenberg, himself a refugee from Nazi Germany, was to play a even more active role in assisting CIMADE’s endeavours. In the early months he actively organized a large programme to send food parcels, books and clothing to the camps, all of which were greatly appreciated as a sign that the recipients had not been abandoned but were in fact very much a concern of the ecumenical church family in the outside world.

By the end of 1941, the extension of the war and the Nazis’ apparent success at dominating Europe were deeply depressing for the young French idealists in CIMADE’s ranks. The leaders, particularly the redoubtable Madeleine Barot, herself only in her early 30s, became all too well aware that their relief efforts were only palliative. Moreover, since they could only operate with the permission and under the control of the Vichy government regulations, they came to see that in many ways they were condoning or compromising with the repressive policies of this regime. Protests against the inhumanity of the internment system would however certainly lead to the rapid closure of their work, to the detriment of those they were trying to help. This moral dilemma was to become even more acute in the following year.

By the summer of 1942, the Nazis’ plans for the complete extermination of European Jewry were in high gear. At the end of July the Vichy authorities gave permission for foreign Jews in France to be deported to ‘unknown destinations in the east’. The inmates in the internment camps were amongst the first to be affected. No one knew what lay ahead, but all surmised that conditions could only be worse The first selections were made at the end of August, leading to 5000 persons being deported from southern France to the notorious collecting point of Drancy outside Paris, and thereafter to Auschwitz. Scenes of horrendous anguish took place in the camps. CIMADE’s workers tried desperately to intercede on behalf of their charges, invoking the list of exemptions – that they were too old, too young, too sick or too engaged in running the camp. But too often they were confronted with the moral dilemma that the selection teams were under orders to find a set contingent. If one person were exempted, another would have to be selected.

At the same time, CIMADE set up refuges outside the internment camps and successfully obtained the transfer of a considerable number of the internees, both Christian and Jewish, to their new homes. Some of these were situated in Protestant areas, such as Le Chambon, where already Pastor Trocm?? was mobilizing his parishioners to assist refugees and fugitives from the Nazis. CIMADE gave valuable assistance in working out a strategic plan, whereby the appearance in the locality of any Vichy or German police units led immediately to the evacuation of these refugees to hiding places in outlying farms or woods – an operation already known to English-speaking readers from Philip Hallie’s splendid book Lest Innocent Blood be Shed.

But this marked an important change for CIMADE. Up to this point they had been a duly authorized social work agency, co-operating with the Vichy authorities. But from 1942 onwards they necessarily were drawn into illegal activities, through the deliberate attempt to protect Jewish refugees from deportation, and eventually by adopting far-reaching schemes to smuggle them out to safety over the border to Switzerland.

Uta Gerdes makes clear that this step was no light matter. But after the disastrous scenes in the camps in late1942, the boundaries of Christian obedience to the Vichy state had been reached. Thereafter, the whole organization came to realize that they now needed to do more than provide palliative and humanitarian care, but rather to go beyond the norms of legality in the cause of a justified resistance.

As was the case in other countries, these French Protestants found overcoming their moral scruples against illegal political acts to be difficult and costly. But they were much helped by a series of theological reflections, conferences and statements put out by their leaders after France’s humiliating defeat in 1940. In order to guard against the danger of compromising their faith by capitulating to the seductions of Nazi-led totalitarianism, these French Protestant theologians wrote a strong statement of their beliefs, which was largely based on the similar declaration made by the German Confessing Church at Barmen in 1934. The Pomeyrol theses of September 1941 reaffirmed the supremacy of God’s commandments over all human affairs, and saw the state’s legitimate role only as a vehicle for implementing divine laws. The task of the state should be to uphold the values of justice and freedom, not to claim an absolute authority over and above biblical precepts. The Church had to accept the consequences of the national defeat, but was under the spiritual necessity of resisting any form of totalitarian or godless influence.

Even more significantly, these French theologians went beyond their German counterparts in adding an extra thesis, which clearly and deliberately affirmed that ‘the Church recognizes in Israel God’s chosen people, in order to send a Saviour into the world and to remain a constant witness in the midst of the nations to the secret of His loyalty. Therefore the Church must protest strongly against any law which seeks to exclude the Jews from the human community’.

It is notable that Madeleine Barot was one of the twelve signatories of this document.The result was to unite CIMADE’s workers in accepting the necessity of opposing the police whenever the lives of Jews were threatened, and to engage in underground or illegal activities in order to rescue them. But at the same time CIMADE refused to join the armed resistance movement, or themselves to carry weapons. Unarmed resistance, they believed, was the truer form of Christian discipleship – a stance which reflected their pacifist and idealistic preferences. But, as Dr Gerdes points out, the major emphasis in the historiography of the French Resistance has been on the armed and militant exploits of such groups as the Maquis – necessarily a largely masculine group – as part of the national struggle against the German invader. So Madeleine Barot’s vision of resistance as primarily one of service to the victims, particularly the persecuted Jews, has been largely overlooked or ignored. Dr Gerdes’ notable achievement is to redress this omission. She rightly asks why rescuing Jews and other victims, at the risk of their lives, should be dismissed as mere non-conformity, whereas the heroics of assassination attempts, sabotage acts, or paramilitary exploits are seen as the truer forms of the Resistance. In fact, she claims, the real honour should be given to all those who sought to challenge the murderous intentions of the dictators and their collaborators. Christians who witnessed in their own way by protesting against such inhumanity likewise deserve to be recognized as vital and valid resisters.

The most exciting chapter of this study comes at the end where Dr Gerdes describes CIMADE’s secret steps taken to smuggle Jews across the frontier to Switzerland. Needless to say, no written records of these rescue efforts were kept. But postwar reconstruction from the Genevan archives suggest that a minimum of 500 persons were saved directly because of the co-operation between CIMADE and the refugee service of the World Council of Churches. In France, the CIMADE workers provided the fugitives with false papers and escorted them by bus or train to the frontier area, mainly in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Here they often had to stay overnight in friendly houses or convents until locally recruited scouts were available to take them to the border itself, to evade the police patrols and to assist them across the barbed wire, walls or streams which separated the two countries. Once in Switzerland, the WCC contacts had to be alerted to receive them. The dangers were obvious. Anonymity was obligatory. Little acknowledgment could be later made on either side. But the achievements of this small band of 53 women and 27 men were not negligible, They were rightly and honourably characterized in later memoirs as ‘les clandestins de Dieu’. And we can therefore be grateful to Dr Gerdes for telling their story, and describing the significance of their contributions, in such an illuminating and convincing manner.

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b) Antonia Leugers ed., Berlin, Rosenstrasse 2-4: Protest in der NS-Diktatur. Annweiler: Plüger/Mooshausen 2005 ISBN 3-89857-187-4

At the end of February 1943 a group of women led a protest in the back streets of Berlin demanding the release of their Jewish husbands from a Gestapo lock-up. At the end of a week the men were sent home. Much controversy has occurred in recent years about this episode. One side argues that this represents a successful popular defiance of Nazi rule, which saved at least these victims from deportation to Auschwitz, and hence forms a significant episode in the whole Holocaust development. The other side claims it was simply due to a change in Gestapo directives or that the popular protest had no influence. This debate is now updated in this new book edited by Antonia Leugers, who is herself a strong supporter of the view that here at least German women made their influence felt and succeeded in their show of solidarity. Her own chapter deals specifically with the redoubtable career of Margarete Sommer, a social worker for the Catholic diocese of Berlin, whose sense of outrage led her to urge her superiors in the Bishops’ Council to issue a public protest through all the churches and a call for intervention by the Pope. The bishops rejected both suggestions, but did at least send their emissary to meet with Eichmann. But it is not clear whether this step had any effect on the Nazis’ decisions.

Another of the contributors believes that the most helpful step taken by the Catholic church workers was their information service, which enabled the victims’ partners to be alerted about their incarceration in the Rosenstrasse, and about the possibility of joining the demonstration. But exact evidence seems to be lacking – possibly because the later fate of the whole of Berlin was so much more awful. One of the most extraordinary incidents concerned the 35 Jewish men, rounded up and taken to the Rosenstrasse, and a week later deported direct to Auschwitz. After two more weeks, however, they were brought back and released – being among the very few Jews ever to be released from Auschwitz. Their story is mentioned by Nathan Stoltzfuss in his well-researched book Resistance of the Heart, and again in his chapter for this anthology. The reasons for their return can only be speculative, but the fact remains that their wives were among the vocal protesters.

The most convincing explanation is surely that internal conflicts within the Nazi hierarchy between the extremist fanatics wanting mass extermination and the more pragmatic exploiters of Jewish labour for the war effort were played out in the Rosenstrasse episode. The women’s protests were certainly a factor and caused Goebbels, for one, much concern. But it would surely be presumptuous to place too much weight on this one rather limited instance. In any case, it was only a matter of timing. The Nazis’ programme for mass murder of all the Jews was unchanged, even if such protests led to the postponement for some of their ‘Final Solution’. Nor did the Rosenstrasse protest alter the immediate situation, since the Nazi decision to exempt, temporarily, Jews in mixed marriages was already in place.

Heroic defiance would have to have happened much earlier and on a much larger scale to bring about any significant change in the Nazis’ intentions. Even when the Dutch and French Catholic bishops issued their belated protests, the deportations to Auschwitz continued. So the belief that women’s or church protests could have changed the course of history is only wishful thinking. But the thorough research displayed in this book deserves attention and congratulation.

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c) James F.Tent, In the shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Modern War studies. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 2003. xvi + 280 pp. ISBN 0-7006-1228-9

(This review appeared first on H-German, and is reproduced by permission of the author).

Forgotten victims of the Holocaust: Germany’s Mischlinge

James F.Tent’s monograph emerges explicitly out of his encounters with Germans of partial Jewish descent who survived the Holocaust. The book is essentially an account of the experiences of some of the roughly 72,000 Mischlinge, Germans with either one or two Jewish grandparents, during the Third Reich. In the preface, Tent explains how he was led to pursue this topic of research by an encounter with a retired East German professor during a 1978 train journey, and by subsequent friendships with other Germans of partial Jewish descent who had survived the Holocaust and gone on to study at the Free University of Berlin. These relationships motivated him to write a ‘history that showed how people of partial Jewish ancestry coped with conditions on a day-to-day basis from the time of the Nazis’ seizure of power until they were vanquished, and then to show how the legacy of that antisemitic hatred has lingered in the minds of the victims ever since’ (p.xii). Rather than replicate the comprehensive studies of Nazi policy concerning the Mischlinge (the term he uses throughout the book), Tent acknowledges the groundwork done by other historians and declares that his interest lies in ‘personal accounts and case histories’ (p. xii). [1]

To this end, Tent bases his work largely on extensive interviews with twenty surviving Germans of partial Jewish descent, supplemented by other cases drawn from archives in Hessen, Berlin, and North Rhine-Westphalia.

In successive chapters, he follows the lives of these persons who were (generally speaking) driven from their schools, occupations, and social networks, and eventually compelled to perform forced labour during World War II. Lastly, he tries to understand the impact of the marginalization of these persons as they restarted their lives following the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945. Each chapter consists of a synopsis of the issue at hand, followed by roughly twenty to twenty-five accounts of individual experiences. In a short conclusion to the book, Tent highlights the difficult choice most Germans of partial Jewish descent made to stay in Germany after 1945, and reiterates his motivation for writing the book, which was ‘to utilize the oral histories that only such eye witnesses can provide’. He goes on to praise their courage: ‘by volunteering such information, they have bequeathed to future generations further proof of the human cost of the Holocaust’ (p.241).

Tent’s case histories are the strength of this book. Indeed the stories of these Germans – many of whom would not have identified themselves with respect to their Jewish heritage before 1933 – are poignant. Young men and women, most of them school-aged at the time of Hitler’s seizure of power, generally lost their opportunities for education, careers, marriages and families. Instead, most were forced to eke out a living performing menial jobs, living as quietly and as privately as possible, coping with denunciations and police surveillance, and eventually serving in some form of forced labour, whether they were men toiling in heavy construction camps or women struggling in war-related industries. Their stories demonstrate the dreadful loss of opportunity they all suffered, but which has often been forgotten beside the greater tragedy of the slaughter of their Jewish relatives. Many of Tent’s subjects were successful at rebuilding their lives after the war, but only at the price of a deliberate and painful silence about their past.

This is not an analytic study of Germans of partial Jewish descent in Nazi Germany. The cases Tent studied are of too narrow an age and educational bracket to be representative (p.18). If anything, at times Tent tries too hard to read meaning into each story he tells, causing him to make conflicting generalizations, or generalizations based on only one or two cases. The result is that one often feels that the condition of Germany’s partially Jewish citizens rises and falls from page to page. For instance, in his chapter on education, after only one case involving a brother and sister, he concludes: ‘all over Germany similar scenes were taking place’. One case later he asserts ‘ a pattern of social exclusion for Mischlinge was emerging all over Germany as National Socialism permeated the educational system’ (pp.29-30). Later still, Tent adds that one student’s ‘school experiences demonstrated that teachers could inflict terrible emotional damage on children’ (p.36). In contrast to these assertions, other cases within the same chapter demonstrate that conditions did not worsen for every one of Test’s subjects and that a few of their teachers and school administrators were kind and helpful. As a result the conclusion at the end of the chapter – that ‘when the issue turned to multiethnic minorities, as far as the Nazis were concerned, Germany’s Jewish-Christian citizens had become by far the victims of choice in 1933’ is not especially convincing (p.59).

Both the Roma people and Afro-Germans suffered racial persecution at least as severe as Tent’s subjects, many of whom received nominal protection thanks to the presence of their ‘Aryan’ parent. It would have been far more effective for Tent to have argued that educational opportunities depended largely on the attitudes and actions of their teachers and local school administrators. A few managed to earn an Abitur, but most were pushed out of the system far earlier.

Along with too many unsubstantiated generalizations, there are frustrating inconsistencies and overstatements in the text. For instance, Tent describes extramarital sexual relations in National Socialist Germany as ‘frowned upon by large segments of society’ and ‘not the done thing’, while four pages later, in another case study, he argues ‘in the normal . . . scheme of things, such a relationship would have aroused little comment’ (p.112 and 116). Later there are conflicting signals about how determined Hitler was to get rid of the Mischlinge (pp.142-50). In the same section, before a series of two dozen stories of those who survived forced labour, Tent asserts that the labour camps were ‘an unmistakable indication of the steep descent of Germany’s Mischlinge into the category of outcasts being readied for slaughter just like Germany’s hapless Jewish citizens’ (p.149).

As a result In the Shadow of the Holocaust is a book which succeeds in spite of the author’s analysis, simply on the strength of the stories he tells Though difficult at times, it is worth reading for the reason that it was written – to put a human face on the suffering of the thousands of Germans of partial Jewish descent who were caught in the racial politics of the Third Reich.

Note: 1) Tent recognizes many of the newer works relating to Germans of partial Jewish descent in Nazi Germany, including Jeremy Noakes, The Development of Nazi Policy towards the German-Jewish ‘Mischlinge’ 1933-1945, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 34 (1989), pp. 291-354; Beate Meyer, ‘Juediche Mischlinge’: Rassenpolitik und Verfolgungserfahung 1933-1945, Hamburg:Doelling und Galitz 1999; Sigrid Lekebusch, Not und Verfolgung der Christen juedischer Herkunft im Rheinland, 1933-1945: Darstellungen und Dokumentation, Koeln: Rheinland-Verlag 1995; Gerhard Lindemann, ‘Typisch juedisch’: Die Stellung der Ev.-luth Landeskirche Hannovers zu Antijudaismus, Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus 1919-1949, Berlin: Duncker und Humblot 1998; Bryan Mark Rigg, Hitler’s Jewish soldiers: The untold story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish descent in the German Military, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 2002; Nathan Stoltzfuss, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany, New York: W.W.Norton and Co. 1996; Alexandar-Sasa Vuletiae, Christen juedischer Herkunft im Dritten Reich: Verfolgung und organisierte Selbstilfe. Kyle Jantzen, Alliance University College, Calgary

2) Journal articles: a) Jeremy Crang, ‘The Abolition of Compulsory Church Parades in the British Army’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 56, no. 1, March 2005, 92ff.

a) Crang neatly outlines the arguments for and against compulsory church parades, which finally led the British Army to order a change in its Regulations in 1946 after 300 years of British Army tradition. He shows that in fact the clerical leaders were more reactionary than the generals (except Montgomery), but the experiences during the Second World War with its mass conscript armies showed that true religion and compulsion could not be combined. The counter effect of church parades on this generation of young men was undoubtedly another cause for the post-1945 decline of religion in Britain.

b) Richard Sykes, ‘Popular Religion in decline: a study from the Black Country’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 56, no.2, June 2005, 987 ff.

A combination of four major factors contributed to the decline of popular religion in England’s West Midlands in the period 1920-1965: the effects of war, particularly the second world war; an increasing emphasis on the importance of the private nuclear family and changing attitudes towards children; the disappearance of older working-class neighbourhoods and communities; and the increasing availability of secular leisure activities. These factors weakened the foundations of religious beliefs and experiences, and sapped religiously motivated behaviour. These social changes, so Sykes believes, whose anti-religious results were more accidental than deliberate, were more influential than intellectual onslaughts which presented a head-on challenge to the credibility of religion, as recently posited by Callum Brown. This places the debate back in the field of religious sociology, and while Sykes’ focus is rather narrow, the evidence suggests his findings are representative across Britain.

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

Dear Friends,

“Der Anfang, das Ende, oh Herr, sie sind dein,
die Spanne dazwischen, das Leben war mein.
Und irrt ich im Dunkeln, und kannt’ mich nicht aus,
bei dir Herr ist Klarheit und Licht ist dein Haus”.

Fritz Reuter, 19th century German poet, often quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Contents:

1) Obituary: Brother Roger of Taizé
2) Book reviews:

a) Ueberschaer, Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt
b) Steele, Christianity, the Other and the Holocaust

3) Work in progress:

a) C Probst, Protestant reception of Luther’s anti-Jewish treatises in Nazi Germany
b) B. Pearson, Democracy and West German Protestantism.

4) Book note: ed. A.Cross, Ecumenism and History

5) Journal articles:

a) Berggren, President Carter
b) Balzer, Religion in Siberia

1) Brother Roger of Taizé

Brother Roger Schutz, the 90-year-old founder of the Taizé Community in France, died on 16 August after being attacked by a visitor to the community. He was widely respected because of the lead he had given for many decades in the field of ecumenical and spiritual witness.

Roger Schutz was born in the village of Provence, near Neuchatel in Switzerland, the son of a Swiss Protestant pastor and a French mother from a family with a long Protestant tradition, on 12 May 1915. He originally wanted a literary career but bowed to the wishes of his father and took up theology instead. It was as a theology student that he arrived in 1940 on his bicycle in the tiny Burgundian village of Taizé, near to the border between Vichy France and the German-occupied part of the country with the idea of founding a house for prayer and contemplation. Here he would make his home for the next two years, welcoming refugees, members of the resistance, and Jews. After his return to Geneva in 1942, he was warned not to go back to France because he had been denounced to the Gestapo.

In Geneva he resumed his theology studies, forming a community of prayer and contemplation with Max Thurian, who would become Taizé’s liturgist and theologian, and two other friends. He was ordained a pastor in 1943 in the Swiss Reformed Church but preferred to be seen as a brother and nothing more. In 1944, he returned to Taizé, and five years later, on Easter Day 1949, the first brothers of the community made a commitment to a life in celibacy, to community of possessions, and to simplicity of life. Already in the early 1950s, Brother Roger (as he was now known) had a brief meeting with Pope Pius XII, and representatives from Taizé were invited to attend meetings in Rome. However, it was Pope John XXIII who cemented the relationship with Taizé, inviting Roger Schutz and Max Thurian as observers to the Second Vatican Council.

By the beginning of the 1960s the reputation of Taizé had spread and hundreds, if not thousands, of young people would visit the community each year. The Romanesque church which the Catholic Church allowed the Taizé brothers to use had become too small. In 1962, the Church of Reconciliation, was inaugurated having been built with the help of young volunteers sent by the German church agency ‘Aktion Sühnezeichen’ – which promoted reconciliation between wartime enemies – creating. an enduring link with Germany. In 1970, Brother Roger launched the idea of holding a ‘Council of Youth’, and when it opened in 1974 after four years of preparation, the inauguration brought about 40 000 young people to Taizé, as well as representatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch, and leaders of various Protestant denominations.

Schutz had been a close friend of Pope John Paul II since Karol Woytila’s days in Krakow, and Pope John Paul himself visited Taizé in 1986. At John Paul’s funeral, Brother Roger took communion from the hands of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI. Answering enquiries, the Taizé Community simply referred to a quotation from Brother Roger in which he said he found his ‘own Christian identity by reconciling within myself the faith of my origins with the mystery of the Catholic faith, without rupture of communion with anyone’.

The influence of Taizé was felt well beyond the Burgundy countryside. The vigils, candles and chants which characterized the community not only became an established part of the worship of many denominations but also accompanied East Germany’s peaceful revolution of 1989 in which Christians played a significant role. The annual new year meetings launched in 1978 and attended by thousands of young adults, usually taking place in a large European city, can also be seen as an inspiration for the World Youth Days launched by Pope John Paul II. Indeed, the news of Brother Roger’s death came as thousands were gathering in Cologne for the 2005 World Youth Days.

Brother Roger received many honours, including the Templeton Prize (1974); the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (1974); the UNESCO Prize for Peace Education (1988); the Charlemagne Prize (1989); and the Robert Schuman Prize (1992).

Roger Schutz, theologian, born 12 May 1915, died 16 August 2005

Contributed by Stephen Brown, World Council of Churches, Geneva.

2a) Ellen Ueberschaer. Junge Gemeinde im Konflikt. Evangelische Jugendarbeit in SBZ und DDR 1945-1961. Konfession und Gesellschaft, Volume 27. Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 2003. 360 pp. Notes, bibliography, index of names. EUR 35.00 (paper), ISBN 3-1701-7898-9.
(This review first appeared on H-German in May 2005, and is reprinted by permission of the author)

Protestant Youth Work, GDR Politics, and Secularization

At the end of World War II, the society and culture of the future German Democratic Republic were marked by vibrant Protestant church life, anchored in a strong and influential tradition and revitalized by ideological conflict with Nazism, and by the pressing needs of postwar society. After forty-five years of Soviet and Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) rule the situation was very different, with the bulk of the East German population alienated from the church and with many ignorant of the most basic points of doctrine. In this study of Protestant youth work in the early years of the GDR, Ellen Ueberschaer seeks to explain this radical transformation, arguing for the centrality of the youth work and youth politics of both the East German Landeskirchen and the SED regime to this process of secularization. At the same time, she seeks to contextualize the forced, state-driven secularization that took place within the GDR as part of longer-term developments that were also at work in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Ueberschaer’s explanation of these developments, which is only clearly laid out in the conclusion of her study, ties together the findings of the two otherwise separate lines of inquiry that make up the bulk this book. The first traces the development and implementation of the “Junge Gemeinde” conception of church youth work. In contrast to the ideas embodied in the youth missions and associations of the nineteenth century, this model emphasized the integration of youth work into the formal institutional structure of the Landeskirche on the one hand, and the integration of youth into the life of the local congregation on the other. The second line of inquiry follows the development of Soviet and SED church and youth politics until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the ensuing relative stabilization of the SED state. Here, Ueberschaer argues that the alienation of youth from traditional religion was always central to the church-political and youth-political goals of the SED, although the party attempted to realize these goals in different ways at different times and in different places. She argues that these opposite but mutually-reinforcing programs of _Verkirchlichung_ and Entkirchlichung combined to drive the secularization process of GDR society.

The Verkirchlichung of Protestant youth work began in the late nineteenth century, but especially developed in the first two decades of the twentieth, as a response to the threat of secularization posed by changing social conditions and by the growth of nationalist and socialist youth movements. Although this process was temporarily stalled during the Third Reich as members of the confessing church resisted German Christian attempts to impose their authority through centralization, it was also strengthened in many ways by the legacy of the Kirchenkampf. To Protestants in postwar Germany–both in the East and in the West–the lessons of the past indicated the need for a strong and socially influential church, which could stand against the dictates of a total state. At the same time, they showed the need for all church work to be rooted in the fundamentals of Christian life–in Bible study, prayer, and congregational worship.

In the Soviet Occupied Zone, where similar threats to the church seemed imminent, such lessons were taken to heart by both the church hierarchy and by individual youth workers. As the Soviet authorities began to restrict church activities–as early as 1946 in Saxony, where local communists were particularly anti-clerical–the institutionalization of youth work and its integration into congregational life was also promoted as a defensive measure, which would put the full authority of the church behind youth activities. Although this process was gradual and contested–and more pronounced in theory than in practice–it did result, in most EasternLandeskirchen, in the eventual coordination of youth work under the authority of Landesjugendpfarrer and Jugendkammern, and, on a higher level, in the creation and coordination of policy in the Jugendkammer-Ost of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland.

Soviet and SED policies of Entkirchlichung were driven, according to Ueberschaer, by both church-political and youth-political considerations. On an ideological level, the teachings of the Protestant churches were viewed as a potential threat to the spread of a materialist and Marxist worldview. On an institutional level, the youth groups of the churches could rival the communist Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), or, if integrated into the local FDJ, could hinder its effectiveness in developing a new generation of communist leaders. Despite these relatively constant goals, the practical policies adopted by the Soviets and by the SED varied with the immediate domestic and geo-political circumstances.

In the first years of the Soviet occupation, severe limitations were placed on church youth gatherings, although these limitations did not follow any coherent centralized policy. Especially targeted were transregional youth gatherings and activities that were not essential to the functioning of congregational life. These pressures peaked from 1950 to 1953 in a period of open repression, marked by the more systematic hindrance of church youth gatherings, by denunciation and defamation of “imperialist” Protestant youth groups, by more concerted observation of Protestant groups and leaders, and by the removal of “Junge Gemeinde” members from the FDJ. These heavy-handed tactics were replaced in the following years by a more subtle and effective strategy of hidden repression. This later strategy, which was less institutional and more individual in focus, aimed especially at the heavily Protestant ranks of Oberschueler, combined repression and anti-Christian propaganda with incentives and rewards for accepting the SED system and the
communist worldview. It culminated in the implementation of the Jugendweihe–a secular confirmation ceremony incompatible with Christian confirmation–as a necessary prerequisite for access to higher education.

In conjunction with more general social modernization trends, these measures were extremely effective, resulting in a 25-to-50 percent decline in the number of church youth groups, and to similar declines in individual group membership (p. 274). They also resulted in a thorough transformation of the East German Protestant milieu, from the status of educated middle-class elites to the position of educational, economic, and social outsiders. At the same time, Ueberschaer argues, this transformation of the Protestant milieu created new opportunities. East German Protestants became the carriers of an alternative culture, capable of supporting limited criticism of the SED regime and, thus, laying groundwork for the collapse of the communist system in 1989.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of this book is its failure to integrate the various lines of its inquiry into a strong central narrative or argument, at least until the conclusion. While Ueberschaer ultimately argues that theVerkirchlichung strategy of the churches and the Entkirchlichung program of the state served to confirm the worst suspicions of each toward the other and to escalate their confrontation, this dynamic is only hinted at in the body of her work.
The choppy and sometimes idiosyncratic narrative, which contains several tangents of marginal relevance to the book’s main arguments, creates the impression of an author who is still a little too close to her sources to step back and focus on the bigger picture. Yet Ueberschaer has done a valuable service in drawing attention to the importance of youth work as a field of ideological and institutional conflict. Her findings will be of interest to both church historians and scholars of the GDR.

Benjamin Pearson, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

b) Michael R.Steele, Christianity, the Other and the Holocaust. Contribution to the Study of Religion, number 70
Westport, Connecticut/London: Greenwood Press, 2003. xiv + 185 pp. $64.95 cloth (This review appeared first in Church History, Vol .72 no.4, December 2003)

Sixty years after the mass murder of the European Jews, commonly known as the Holocaust, debate still continues concerning the responsibility of the Christian churches both for the genesis and the implementation of these atrocities. As with the parallel debate over the uniqueness of the Holocaust, scholars have been unable to reach an agreed consensus. For several decades now, the issue has been contended as to whether the tragedy of the Jews was the latest round in a tradition of anti-Jewish bigotry by Christians of all denominations, as a result of the legacy of hatred and intolerance built up over the centuries. Or was the religious factor merely a background one, to be overtaken by the far more virulent and violent antisemitism of German racialism, whose exponents in the Nazi ranks were in fact putting into action a modern secularized ideology of the twentieth century.

Michael Steele is clearly committed to the first of these propositions. Western culture, he says, as shaped by Europe’s Christian civilization and especially by the Roman Catholic Church, propagated an exclusionary vision of mankind, which relegated all non-believers outside its orbit to be marginalized, dehumanized and often destroyed. Marked down as “Other”, such outcasts were treated as worthy of discrimination or destruction, and indeed suffered such a fate whenever Christianity was dominant. The persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust is thus the culmination of characteristic Christian features of triumphalism and supersessionism, an intricate cultural process developed over seventeen centuries. It can be seen as part of a long lamentable pattern.
Steele seeks to examine how the development of a certain kind of prejudgment about The Other could lead to the growth of a theology of sacred violence, which in turn was the basis for the physical subjugation or even destruction of whole populations, in a series of alarming preludes to the Holocaust. Steele claims to find a continuing and cumulative process of Christian violence against outsiders and non-believers, especially Jews, ever since the reign of the Emperor Constantine. Subsequently, the same features were taken over by the expansionist, aggressively missionizing Christianity of later centuries, leading eventually to a claim to world-wide dominance. Possession of the one, true religion justified the consequent enslavement, and even extermination, of enormous numbers of innocent victims in the pursuit of the eradication of all alternatives.

Given Steele’s predetermined stance, the examples chosen to illustrate this thesis are predictable. Christians took over the militant imperialist mindset of the Roman Empire, launched the Crusades, invaded and subdued with barbarous ferocity the indigenous populations of Asia, Africa and America, imposed the horrors of the slave trade, and all along sought to eliminate their nearest religious rivals, the Jews, by legitimated acts of homicidal violence. Given the shortness of the book, there is an inevitable compression, which, as a result, leads to unilateral distortion. Steele’s teleological point of view flattens out the complexities and divagations of historical circumstances. He ignores the evidence of whole periods and territories where historical conditions do not confirm his thesis. Nor does he critically examine alternative views, but repetitiously invokes the parallels between Christian violence against Jews in the past and Nazi atrocities in the Holocaust. His arguments are based on numerous secondary sources by authors who agree with him. In short, this is not how history should be written.

Like Daniel Goldhagen, who recently wrote a book with similar theme, it would appear that Michael Steele is not a historian, but a moralist. As such, he does not fail to denounce Christianity as a repressive belief system, which over the centuries has motivated perpetrators to murder innocent victims, especially Jews, with impunity, and has led bystanders to ignore, or pass by, the inhumanity of such actions. Logically, his adoption of the culmination theory as an explanation for the Holocaust should lead him to a highly pessimistic view of the future, since Christianity has not abandoned its dogmas or structures, and since its adherents, he believes, are incapable of overthrowing the grip of such a powerful ideology. Perhaps it is only wishful thinking which leads him by the book’s conclusion to advocate the growth of a pluralistic society, which has been brutally thwarted during so many centuries of Western Christian history by the sacred, violent denial of its vision. But this is certainly not a historical judgment.

JSC

3) Work in progress:

a) Chris Probst, Royal Holloway College, London

Protestant reception of Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish treatises in Nazi Germany

Martin Luther wrote at least five treatises on the subject of “the Jews”. One treats Von den Juden und Ihren Lügen, which – though heavily weighted with cogent theological argumentation – nonetheless contains typical late mediaeval antisemitic accusations, along with seven severe recommendations for dealing with the Jews. This treatise has fueled the greatest discussion of the reformer’s attitude towards Jews and Judaism

How did German Protestants during the Nazi era receive these writings, which were now being widely disseminated throughout their homeland? Did Protestants confront the “Jewish question” by the light of these treatises, either explicitly or implicitly? How were the surrounding events interpreted by Protestants in the light of Von den Juden, if at all? These are the central questions to be answered in my dissertation.

Though not central to my thesis’ argument, I have suggested that Von den Juden contains both anti-Judaic and antisemitic rhetoric. With Gavin Langmuir, I contend that the now-traditional distinction between “theological” anti-Judaism and “racial” antisemitism (e.g.Maurer, Oberman) is not empirically verifiable, and thus should be discarded. Instead we should consider the rational, irrational and non-rational aspects of theological thought. Irrational rhetoric (the Blood Libel, for example) may be considered antisemitic, while some (though not all) non-rational argumentation (such as Luther’s application of biblical passages to contemporary Jews) can be considered anti-Judaic.

Using an intellectual history approach, I will show that the reception of Luther’s ideas about the Jews helped some German Protestants in the Third Reich to look favourably upon Nazi antisemitism and thus to support – or at least not to oppose – the antisemitic policies and practices of the regime.

b) Benjamin Pearson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

I am currently in the early writing stage of a dissertation which examines democracy and West German Protestant political identity at the German Protestant Kirchentag from 1949 until the early 1970s. Basically I examine the different ways in which West German Protestants understood their new role in a democratic society in the post-war years. I then trace the ways this understanding changed during the period of my study. What I have found so far is that the early 1950s were dominated by an optimistic belief in the politically and socially transforming power of Christian faith. This gave way to a more academic and classically liberal phase in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Finally in the mid-1960s a new more activist and liberationist conception of democracy began to prevail.

4) Book Notes: ed. Anthony Cross, Ecumenism and History: Studies in honour of John H.Y.Briggs, Carlisle, Cumbria: Paternoster Press 2002 ISBN 1-84227-135-0 362 pp.

This Festschrift for John Briggs, a leading British Baptist, long-time academic, and champion of ecumenical causes, brings together essays from his many friends. Although too diverse for a coherent review, one contribution deserves special notice. Keith Clements, the retiring General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches, writes a splendid, if too short, piece on biography and history. He uses as his text the pithy remark by the American novelist Bernard Malamud: “The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay out of time’s mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly: as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction”. But Clements disagrees. The historical record is a necessary corrective to fictional biography. A biographer has therefore to be “at one and the same time, fact-gatherer, chronicler, detective, psychologist, portrait-painter and (yes) historian”. He quotes his own experience as the author of the magnificent life of J.H.Oldham, and his subsequent writings about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Reconstructing the consciousness and the motivations of the person involved is a truly demanding task. To fill in the details not recorded in documents requires an imaginative empathy, even artistic licence. But it must not violate either the factual record or known character for the sake of dramatic effect or propaganda interests. Clements rightly therefore takes issue with the recent film about Bonhoeffer, Agent of Grace, which distorts the known facts and produces a seriously diminished, even embarrassing picture. Bonhoeffer’s biography necessitates treading a fine line between a mere chronicle and an innovative fiction. Clements’ plea is to search for “the inner links of a multifaceted life with all its ambiguity and paradox, its hiddenness as well as overt character”. By such means, the radical challenges of Bonhoeffer’s theology can be linked to the tragic drama of his career, making for “a fascinating life of daring integrity lived among evil and compromises with evil.”

5) Journal articles:

a) D.J.Berggren, “The living faith of President Carter” in Journal of Church and State, Vol 47, no. 1, Winter 2005, 43ff.
Berggren outlines how the Christian principles of honesty, thrift, goodness and peacemaking guided Carter’s Presidency (1977-81), set his policy priorities, and were reflected in his post-presidency initiatives. His 2002 Nobel Peace Prize was an overdue recognition of his strong Christian principles, illustrating his firm commitment to the absolute ethic of the Gospel.

b) M.M.Balzer, “Whose steeple is higher? Religious competition in Siberia” in Religion, State and Society, Vol 31, no. 1, March 2005, 57ff
Dr Balzer reports on the varieties of recent religious experiences in Siberia. Religion, she claims, has become an idiom through which competing definitions of homeland and national pride are being shaped. Christian missionaries from outside Siberia are in competition with local nativist shamans and with Moslem and Buddhist immigrants. These activities all indicate that a large-scale abandonment of Soviet atheism is taking place and a multi-faith community is arising.

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

Dear Friends,

Contents

1) Book reviews:

a) Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich: Berlin clergy
b) ed..Bottum and Dalin, The Pius War
c) ed Bergen, The Sword of the Lord

2) Journal articles

a) Porter, Australian chaplains
b) Wolf, Pius XI and Nazi ideologies
c) Lee, Watchman Nee in China
d) Kirby, Freemasonry and the Church of England

1a) b) Kevin Spicer, Resisting the Third Reich. The Catholic Clergy in Hitler’s Berlin. By Kevin P. Spicer. (De Kalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press. 2004. Pp.xi, 254. $36.00 US.) ISBN 0-87580-330-X

(This review first appeared in Catholic Historical Review, Vol.91, no.1 January 2005)
In 1933 the majority of German Catholics greeted the Nazis’ rise to power with enthusiasm. Hitler promised a new beginning, the restoration of Germany’s place in world affairs, a bulwark against Communism, and strong leadership. All served to outweigh the reservations expressed by some of the bishops. The groundswell was enough to bring almost universal approval when Hitler offered to sign a Concordat with the Vatican in July 1933. These warm expressionsof support for the new regime by bishops and clergy, however, became a liability when Nazi policy increasingly launched anti-Catholic and anti-clerical campaigns designed to undermine the Concordat’s intentions. At the local level, the priests were often confronted with an undeclared war. How they dealt with the situation is the subject of Kevin Spicer’s well-researched investigation.

Forty years ago Guenter Lewy published the first English-language survey of the Catholic Church and the Third Reich, which was highly critical in tone. More recently, other American church historians have chastised the German Catholic leaders for not acting more forcefully to protest or resist the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Spicer, however, avoids any kind of wishful thinking about what might have happened if only, but rather examines the actual conduct of the Catholic milieu and explores the dilemmas confronting its clergy as the political situation became ever more confrontational.

He has chosen for his case study the diocese of Berlin. This can hardly be considered representative, since Catholics were a small minority in the nation’s capital where the spirit of Bismarck still reigned. Nevertheless, Spicer shows that the range of responses by the Berlin clergy to the Nazi onslaught was matched in other parts of the country. A very few priests gave openly fervent support to the Nazi regime, eagerly demonstrating their loyalty to the Führer, down to the very end. Spicer’s chapter on these “brown priests” breaks new ground. On the other side, only a few were clear-sighted enough to recognize the pernicious character of the Nazis’ ideology and practices. The most notable example was that of Monsignor Bernhard Lichtenberg, whose combative willingness to challenge the Nazi state far outstripped that of the rest of the clergy in his diocese. Spicer devotes a whole chapter to his unique witness. The majority of the clergy, however, adopted a stance of passive withdrawal from politics, and a concentration on their pastoral duties in their parishes. Spicer makes use of the term Resistenz, as outlined by the noted German historian Martin Broszat, to describe this attempt by the clergy to protect the local Catholic milieu and their prized ministerial freedom.

Spicer sees the outrageous murder of a leading Catholic layman in Berlin, Erich Klausener, on the occasion of the so-called Röhm putsch in June 1934 as the turning point which cured most clergy of their illusions about the Nazi regime. The bishops became more circumspect. But, as others have already shown, their divided counsels prevented any more cohesive or open opposition. However, from 1935 onwards, Berlin had as its bishop, Konrad Preysing, who had no doubts about the incompatibility of National Socialism and Catholicism. Nevertheless he too shared his colleagues’ inherent nationalism and hesitancy to question governmental authority. He too sought to avoid any direct clash with the state.

Only when the Nazis’ encroachments on Catholic sacramental duties and doctrines became so constant and threatening were the bishops and clergy ready to take up more active forms of resistance. But the circle of obligation was limited to their own supporters. As Spicer shows in his chapter on Jews and the diocese of Berlin, the majority of Catholics did not feel obliged to make forceful protests on behalf of Jews or other victims of Nazi repression. Provost Lichtenberg was the exception, and paid the price of imprisonment by the Gestapo for his outspoken witness for the Jews. As a result, the Church’s leaders were even less ready to provide encouragement to act on behalf of this persecuted minority.

Spicer’s narrative necessarily blends events in Berlin with the national picture of swelling Nazi propaganda and intimidation, and the increasing smell of fear among the clergy. In 1943 four of the Berlin diocese’s priests in Stettin were arrested and executed. Bishop Preysing, despite his adversarial stance, was deterred from open defiance. Spicer gives details of the Gestapo’s harassment of nearly one-third of the parochial clergy of the diocese, many of whom had been denounced by parishioners. His description of their dilemmas in seeking to protect the church’s sacramental witness, especially in war-time, is well done. Some comparisons with the similar predicament of Berlin’s Protestant clergy would have been helpful at this point, drawing perhaps on the new study edited by Erich Schuppan, Bekenntnis in Not.

In conclusion, Spicer claims that, at a time of political extremism and ideological radicalism, the clergy’s acts of Resistenz provided an alternative space for Catholics to challenge Nazism’s all-pervasive momentum. Only a few priests were called to face martyrdom, when they died heroically. But, for the majority, their faithful pastoral ministry, he suggests, was an effective, if unspectacular, witness against Nazi heresies and totalitarian ambitions. Given the paucity of English-language studies of German Catholicism, Spicer’s balanced account of this regional church at this particularly traumatic time is much to be welcomed.
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1b) Joseph Bottum and David Dalin eds., The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2004), 282pp. With an Annotated Bibliography of Works on Pius XII, the Second World War, and the Holocaust.

The Pius War is a selection of reviews, previously published, of recent books critical of Pope Pius XII’s stance on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. The remainder of the book, fully 183 pages, is an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources on Pius XII, by William Doino Jr. An introductory essay by Joseph Bottum, a journalist and published poet, sums up the view of the editors.

Bottum insists the reviews show beyond a shadow of a doubt that the books critical of Pius XII misread documents and are brimming with factual errors. The defenders of Pius XII have won all the battles, he asserts, but they have lost the war, for against all reason the prevailing view is still highly critical of the pope.(1) He explains this state of affairs with an ad hominem argument: the scholarship of those critical of Pius is singularly unpersuasive, but prevails because of bigotry, specifically “overblown hatred” of Pius, and anti-Catholicism.(8-9)

The reviews that follow are exceptionally uneven: some do not measure up to conventional standards of scholarship, while others have merit. The lapses in scholarship are frequent, not incidental: documents are misread; statements are quoted with no source provided; words and action are cited, divorced from historical context.

Let us take up misread documents first. Ronald Rychlak tells us that Pius XII personally helped “1,000 German Jews” emigrate to Brazil.(36) But one has only to consult an editor of the Vatican’s own diplomatic papers, to learn that the “German Jews” were in reality “non-Aryan Catholics.” (Pierre Blet S.J., Pius XII and the Second World War: According to the Archives of the Vatican, pp. 141-49. From Blet’s account, the number was far fewer than 1,000) We also learn from Rychlak that in the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican, “German officials agreed to regard baptized Jews as Christians,” and that this saved thousands of Jewish lives. (230. In: Rychlak, Hitler,the War, and the Pope, p. 60) No provision of the Concordat is cited for this unique and bizarre claim.

Another example: Russell Hittinger reviewing Kertzer’s, The Popes Against the Jews, insists Kertzer is wrong is stating that the 1937 papal encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, contains “no direct attack on anti-Semitism.” Hillinger claims the encyclical discusses why Scripture and the Incarnation “forbid any racial derogation of the Œchosen people’.”(49) I went back to the encyclical to check this claim, and found that the only place Scripture is cited in connection with “the people of the old covenant,” is to remind us of their “materialism and worldliness.” As for the Incarnation, the encyclical tells us that Jesus “took His human nature from the people which was afterwards to nail Him to a Cross.” (“Mit brennender Sorge,” The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the Third Reich. New York: Longmans, Green, 1942. pp. 526-27.)

A final example: we learn from William Doino, that “Cardinal Pacelli sent explicit instructions to the papal nuncio in Germany, on April 4, 1933, to oppose Nazi anti-Semitism.” As evidence, Doino cites a letter discovered in the newly opened archives of Pope Pius XI. (126. It can be found on the internet, Zenit News Agency, 17 February 2003.) The letter from Cardinal Pacelli states that the pope had been asked to intervene regarding “anti-Semitic excesses in Germany,” and asks the nuncio “to see if and how it is possible to be involved in the desired way.” This is not the same as explicit instructions to oppose Nazi antisemitism. Doino also omits the nuncio’s response, which was to recommend against an intervention, which would be interpreted as a protest against government policies. The matter was then dropped. (Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican, p. 33.)

The next lapse is that sources are not cited, as if we are to take evidence on faith. Rabbi David Dalin mentions an account by the Italian princess Enza Pignatelli Aragona Cortés, of Pius’ surprised response to the roundup of Jews in Rome. (“But the Germans had promised not to touch the Jews.”)(15) We have no way of assessing the reliability of this account, as no source is provided.

Another example: Ronald Rychlak faults Susan Zuccotti for not consulting certain transcripts attesting to the aid Pius XII gave to the Jewish people. Nothing is said about where these transcripts are available.

The final lapse in scholarship is the inattention to historical context. Peremptory claims are made, short bursts of ammunition, meant to refute an extended argument. Thus Dalin, again without citing sources, states in vindication of Pius, that in August 1942, the nuncio in France protested against the deportation of Jews.(18) How much does this tell us? Was the protest emphatic or lame? Why did the pope himself not say something in support of the protest of French bishops, since the Vichy regime sought the goodwill of the Vatican? Why was the Vatican interest in the anti-Jewish decrees of 1940 and 1941, limited to concern over baptized Jews? Why was the Jewish issue forgotten by the Fall of 1942 when Vichy offered concessions to the Church, including subsidies for religious schools? On that occasion the nuncio proclaimed that the “new France” was being built on a foundation of “spiritual values.” (See Marrus/Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews, pp.200-03, 272-79) The short burst, with dramatic flourish, is not an argument.

There are contributions of merit in this book as well. Kevin Doyle on The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI, is right to point to the tendency to second-guess actors of long ago, while neglecting to steep ourselves in the values and circumstances of the time. Training our moral gaze on the past rather than on ourselves in the present breeds its own hypocrisy. But Doyle is no hagiographer and he considers the record of the Church “uneven.” (56) I took issue with John Jay Hughes’ negative assessment of Michael Phayer’s, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, but he is rightfully indignant at the picture on the dust cover of the book, which depicts the Vatican and the Nazis as partners in genocide. Rainer Decker’s review of John Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope, is thoughtful and judicious, as is John Conway’s piece on the ill-fated joint Catholic-Jewish Commission which reviewed the eleven volumes, Actes et Documents du Saint Siége relatifs á la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Michael Novak makes some valid criticisms of Daniel Goldhagen’s A Moral Reckoning, as does Robert Wilkin of James Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword.

Doino’s meticulous and thorough annotated bibliography is a valuable source for those interested in the controversy over Pius XII. It includes primary sources, biographies, accounts of diplomats, books and articles by defenders and critics of the pope, works on the Concordat, the anti-Nazi resistance, national Churches, and much else besides. Nothing seems to have escaped his notice, and the bibliography is worth the book. A point well-documented in his bibliography, which includes wartime newspapers and diaries, is that Pius was perceived during the war as an anti-Nazi, and sympathetic to the Jewish plight.

It would be a mistake, though, to be guided by Doino’s notes. He tells us that he takes a positive view of Pius XII; it can also be said that he takes a negative view of critics of the pope. Works critical of the pope are uniformly “uneven” (9. Eamon Duffy), “less reliable,” (112. Frank Coppa), and demonstrate “superficial knowledge.” (182. John Pawlikowski, Donald Dietrich, István Deák, and Robert Wistrich.) On the other hand, Doino insists that David Dalin’s eight-page defense of the pope in the neo-conservative Weekly Standard (26 February 2001, pp. 31-39) “became one of the most talked-about statements ever published on Pius XII.” (190) I tell my students that what I look for in their essays are cogent arguments, not set conclusions. For Doino, what seems to count in evaluating a book is the right conclusion, not the cogency of the argument, or thoroughness of research.

Regrettably, one has to wade through flights of fantasy to get to some of the telling points in the book. For a defense of the Pius XII, the reader would do well to turn to the works of such scholars as Robert Graham S.J., Pierre Blet S.J., Owen Chadwick, Victor Conzemius, Ludwig Volk, and Konrad Repgen, for reasoned arguments and telling evidence, but most of all for their respectful appeal to our intelligence. This book, however, is driven by a self-righteous indignation at those who would dare criticize Pius XII; it speaks to those already convinced rather than to those with an open mind.
Jacques Kornberg, University of Toronto

1c) ed. Doris Bergen, The Sword of the Lord. Military Chaplains from the first to the twenty-first century. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 2004. ISBN 0-268-02176-7, 298 pp.

Military chaplaincies have not often been the subject of academic surveys, especially over long periods, or on a comparative basis. These papers from a conference held at Notre Dame University and skillfully edited by Doris Bergen are therefore welcome in giving a far-ranging coverage to this topic. The unifying theme is however clear: how have or do military chaplains solve the dilemmas posed by the tensions between their loyalties to their God of love and peace, and those to their temporal employers in national armies, pursuing victory through war and violence. The book is inclusive by not limiting its purview solely to Christian chaplains. A valuable chapter by an American Jewish chaplain in the second world war adds an additional perspective.
Necessarily the early chapters on chaplains in antiquity are academic in approach. At least from the fifth century Christian military chaplains are recorded as seeking to minister with word and sacrament to soldiers in their highly precarious profession. In his contribution, Michael McCormick has even dug up a morale-boosting homily for warriors at the Carolingian court in the ninth century. And David Bachrach shows how the armies of the mediaeval centuries could depend on priests to see them through the terrors and moral dilemmas inherent in the great crusades.

Little changed with the Reformation, except that by the seventeenth century, as Anne Laurence outlines, a large number of written pamphlets survive, which report the arguments used by chaplains attempting to prove that God was on their side. The evidence would seem to suggest that religious propaganda of this sort only encouraged violence against sectarian opponents, and that the chaplains’ pens as well as their swords could inflict fatal wounds.
By the eighteenth century, the creation of professional armies by the Prussian kings led to a similar development among military chaplains, drawing on the reservoir of Pietist preachers trained in Halle. The emphasis in their ministry was already based on Romans 13:1, and on their function to bring religious support to the monarch’s cause. Inevitably this gave an obrigkeitshörig character to this service. And subsequent waves of nationalist feelings only reinforced this belief in the sacredness of each country’s national destiny.

By the time of the first world war, chaplains were expected to be officers and gentlemen, who frequently saw their duty as upholding idealistic, even chauvinistic notions as to how God would bless their armies. Very often their prayers for national victory were complemented by efforts to demonize the enemy as non-Christian, or alternatively to claim the virtues of a sacrificial death in battle. In the tragic and traumatic circumstances of trench warfare, these were features which led to a rapid decline in the credibility of the chaplains’ proclamations, and in the long run to a major crisis for the future of the whole church.

The post-1918 revulsion against this kind of religious-political propaganda, and the rise of various pacifist movements, led to further challenges to the whole institution of military chaplaincies. By the second world war, virtually all prophetic utterances were low-keyed, and the chaplains came to see their duty primarily in pastoral terms. The distance between the world of politics and war, on the one side, and the world of spiritual care and consolation, on the other, remained awesome.

In the aftermath of this war, even for the victors, there was great disillusionment and ambivalence about the chaplains’ ministry. Army regulations and compulsory worship services were greatly resented, and were rarely offset by the personal witness and compassion of the individual chaplain. Their common recourse to a concentration on welfare work only revealed the failure of their religious vocation. For far too many of the ordinary soldiers, the chaplain’s stance seemed to be hypocritical with its moralistic censoriousness and lack of sympathy, and incommensurate with the appalling casualties both military and civilian. The contempt for conventional religion only grew, and, in some cases, as in Nazi Germany, was prompted by the political authorities. A negative view of military chaplains prevailed. But in part this was unjust, and more a reflection of the abiding resentment against war in general and its failure to make a brave new, if not Christian, world.

In retrospect, the second world war raised in many minds the acute moral dilemma of participating in an immoral war of annihilation and wholesale destruction. The chaplains’ failure to protest against mass murders of civilians came to be source of anguish, as was also their virtual inability to assist the victims. Particularly poignant is here the report of Rabbi Max Wall’s service in Germany in 1945. And Fr. Joseph O’Donnell’s heartfelt reflections on his service in Vietnam demonstrates the paradoxes and challenges of present-day chaplaincies.

In her summary, Anne Loveland points out that the U.S. military authorities still impose on chaplains their secular requirements for morale-boosting, the inculcation of sexual morality and ideological conformity. The consequent alienation of many soldiers, given their secular upbringing, becomes a serious factor which hinders, if not contradicts, any strong Christian proclamation. The increased emphasis on pastoral concerns is partly because chaplains are well aware that they are clearly inhibited from any prophetic utterances critical of the policies of their government or president. It is only a pity that she makes no reference to chaplaincy work in Iraq.

Fr. Baxter, in his afterword, turns back to the central issue of whether a Christian can in good conscience participate in military chaplaincy, or indeed military service at all, or whether this does not demand a narrowing of allegiances, which promote only a national or political agenda for secular reasons. The debate continues.

The comprehensive bibliography dealing with all aspects of military chaplaincies is commendable and helpful.

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2a) Patrick Porter, The Sacred Service. Australian chaplains in the Great War, in War and Society, Vol. 20, no.2, 2002, 23ff
Australian military chaplains shared with their British imperial colleagues in the Great War the experiences of intimate contact with the realities of modern warfare, which compelled moral and theological responses The majority of them had quickly taken the same line as their Englsh counterparts and sanctioned the war as God’s will. But not all were enthusiastic about legitimising killing of the enemy. There is little evidence that Australian chaplains, or indeed any others, enjoyed participation in trench warfare as a kind of masculine masochism. On the contrary most abhorred the slaughter, eve while supporting the war. They grew out of venerating youthful sacrifice or regarding the war as spiritually uplifting. Their revulsion against the bloodiness of battle was authentic. But the war changed the content of their faith. The emphasis necessarily came to be placed on suffering, and on whether God’s good purposes were overruled by human sin. The path of suffering and death was not infrequently balanced by mystical visions of the crucified Christ, offering protection and redemption to the dying soldiers. Such experiences only increased the sense of distance from the Australian home front, and made for traumatic readjustments after 1919. Nor was it easy somehow to uphold the idea that the war’s suffering and deaths had been meaningful. Pardres in Australia and elsewhere were enlisted in the civic religious ceremonies of the post-war years and had to steer a fine line between nsational glorification and their awareness of the need for repentance and mourning. As war sanctifiers as well as disturbed witnesses, these chaplains played an ambivalent role. Drawing from the extensive records of the Australian Chaplaincy Service, Porter shows that these men reached the same conclusions as their colleagiues elsewhere, as they struggled between the two worlds of meaning and futility, redemption and despair.

2b) Hubert Wolf, Pius XI und die “Zeitirrtümer” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Vol.53, no.1, January 2005, pp.1 ff
The papers in the Vatican archives dealing with Germany during the reign of Pope Pius XI (1922-1939) were opened two years ago. One of the first results to be published is the report by Professor Hubert Wolf of Münster. He describes the steps taken from 1934 onwards by various branches of the Curia to examine the writings of leading Nazis to see whether they should be publicly condemned. A syllabus against racism was in the course of preparation, but in fact was never published before Pius XI died. However many of the ideas were expressed in the notable Encyclical of March 1937 “Mit brennender Sorge”. In Wolf’s view, the Curia was always torn between its desire to condemn dangerous heresy, and the need to prevent any recurrence of another Kulturkampf in Germany.

2c) J.T-H.Lee, Watchman Nee and the Little Flock Movement in Maoist China in Church History, Vol. 74, no 1, March 2005, pp.68-96
Watchman Nee (1903-72) was an independent Protestant evangelist who built up a conservative following, known as the Little Flock, which refused to accept the imposed leadership of the Communist dictatorship after 1949, and suffered the consequences.

Lee’s insightful article explains the tribulations experienced by this sect in trying to avoid Maoist political control, and to keep its distance from the more collaborationist Three Self Patriotic Movement, which still continues today. The latter accepted the need to obey the government’s edicts in order to pursue its main goal, which was to strike free from control by foreign missionaries, and to propagate a self-governing, self-financing and self-propagating Chinese model church. Nee’s Little Flock was no less dedicated to Chinese autonomy, but with his firm belief in the empowerment of the laity, refused any “guidance” from outside authority. Consequently Nee’s attempts to recruit those congregations whose foreign leadership has been expelled soon ran into difficulties. In 1956 Nee was denounced as a reactionary and died in a labour camp in 1972. Nevertheless the Little Flock survived, and demonstrated the failure of the Maoist state to exercise absolute control in the religious sphere.

2d) Dianne Kirby, Christianity and Freemasonry: The compatibility debate within the Church of England in Journal of Religious History, Vol 29, no. 1, February 2005, pp 43 ff.

Dianne Kirby gives a sprightly account of the continuing debate in the Church of England as to whether membership in a Masonic lodge is compatible with the Church of England’s beliefs. During the early 1950s, both the monarch, George VI, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Fisher, were Masons. But there were some Anglicans, particularly Anglo-Catholics, who noted that the Vatican had always banned membership and wondered whether in fact the two loyalties could be combined. Demands for enquiry by various synods were successfully headed off, when Archbishop Fisher argued that he and 16 other bishops were men of true faith, whose judgement should not be questioned. But the theological issues were never truly aired, as Masons are forbidden to discuss their beliefs and practices with non-Masons. Outsiders were fobbed off with the view that the actions of these well-meaning and charitable men were all part of the traditional establishment, or perhaps “a fairly harmless eccentricity”. In all, the conclusion was that “it would be a sad day when there was no room for eccentricity in the Church of England”. But even today the current Archbishop, Rowan Williams, has acknowledged his own concern about the secrecy of Masonic rites and the implications of the oaths involved.

Best wishes to you all, especially for those still enjoying a summer holiday,
John Conway
jconway@Interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

I take the liberty of sending you this month a paper I recently read to a meeting of the Commission internationale d’histoire ecclesiastique comparée in Sydney, Australia.

Missions to Israel: The rise and fall of Protestant missions to the Jews, 1800-2000

John S.Conway
University of British Columbia

Mission is fundamental to the life of the Christian Church. But the earliest and longest continuous Christian mission – that towards the Jewish people – has undeniably been one of only limited success, and more often has been marked by frustration and failure. These were the sentiments which by the fourth century had led to the polemical anti-Judaism of the ancient church fathers like Chrysostom. More ominously these animosities promoted the kind of hostility, social and political as well as theological, which characterized Christian attitudes towards Jews for so many centuries. Nor did the Reformation bring about a significant alteration. As the example of Luther shows, mediaeval anti-Judaism could easily be carried over into Protestantism.

We therefore need to find some additional factors which led to the surprising re-invigoration of missions towards Israel at the end of the eighteenth century, despite the accumulated evidence that Jews were ready to suffer persecutions, expulsions and martyrdom rather than desert their historic faith. The first factor was the remarkable revival of the Protestant prophetic tradition, beginning with the English Puritans of the seventeenth century, and the German Pietists of the eighteenth century, which coalesced into the notable evangelical impetus, through the growth of missionary societies, in the nineteenth.
Interest in mission to the Jews can in part be traced to that branch of Protestant thought which took literally the biblical prophecies concerning the restoration of Jews to Israel and their conversion. Thereby they rejected the doctrine, prevalent since the time of Augustine, that the Church had superseded the Jews as the Chosen People of God. Calvinist preachers in particular honoured the Old Testament, named their children with Jewish biblical names, and in so doing dissociated themselves from all mediaeval i.e. Catholic anti-judaic antagonisms.

In the ranks of the growing Pietist movement in Germany in the eighteenth century, the influence of Philip Jakob Spener was considerable. His belief in the need for the conversion of the Jews was linked to his millenarian expectations, which in turn were taken up by others, for example, in England by the group of Protestant non-conformists who adopted a similar theology.

These Calvinist-indoctrinated groups defined the Jews as heirs of ancient Israel whose return to their homeland in Palestine had long been prophesized as a prelude to the return of the Messiah. This eschatological train of thought was undoubtedly greatly reinforced by the traumatic political events associated with the French Revolution. Many earnest Protestants came to believe that what was happening before their eyes was the apocalyptic sequence of events prophesized so long ago. Dispensationalists placed the Jews in the centre of Christian hopes for the end time. Their desire was also to save individual members of the Jewish people from dying in unbelief. Such eschatological hopes, however, would be much expedited by promoting the return of all Jews to their promised land, since their role was to be a blessing to the nations, whose conversion would be the prelude to the final end of the world. 1)

The institutional embodiment of these ideas was the establishment of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, later the Church Mission to the Jews, in 1809. It was part of the great expansion of missionary endeavours launched in these decades, when British and later American evangelicals took advantage of newly-developed technologies to promote their missionary vision world-wide.

As men’s geographical horizons expanded, so did their religious ambitions. The notable and successful campaign against the slave trade being organized during these years was, as is well known, sponsored by the evangelical church party in Britain Its ability to mobilize the enthusiasm, organizational skills and often the heroic self-sacrifice of its individual supporters became a model for all nineteenth century missionary endeavours. In reaching out to the Jews, however, it is notable that few British evangelicals were equipped for this task. For several decades the first recruits for the Church’s Mission to the Jews were all drawn from German Pietist ranks. In the initial stages, the majority of those targeted for this mission were in Europe. In the 1820s and 1830s, together with parallel societies established in Berlin, the Rhineland, Saxony and Detmold, mission stations were established in eastern Europe as well as in trading centres where Jews were settled such as Constantinople, Aleppo, Beirut, Baghdad and Cochin. The distribution of tracts in English, Hebrew and German reached astonishing totals.

At the same time, secular developments leading to the emancipation of the Jews in many parts of Europe encouraged some Christian authorities to believe that Jews would now be willing to embrace the theological insights of the majority culture. With the opening of the ghetto gates, the last remnants of the Middle Ages would vanish. It was a unique opportunity for the presentation of the advantages of the Christian faith.

These great ambitions and exalted claims were most clearly spelt out in the project launched in the 1830s for collaboration between the Prussian monarch, Frederick William IV, and the British government, along with the Church of England, to set up a jointly-managed episcopal see in Jerusalem, specially to convert the Jews resident there. 2) The endorsation by these two major Protestant powers of their belief in the restoration of Israel was a triumphant vindication of the ideas of the London Society’s members, led by the prominent evangelical Lord Shaftesbury. The appointment in 1841 of the first bishop. Michael Alexander, a former Prussian citizen of Jewish origin and now ordained in the Church of England, seemed to symbolize the mission’s international and interfaith character. As one commentator remarked: “The prospect of a Jewish successor for Saint James was an entrancing one. It would demonstrate both the respect with which the House of Israel should be treated by Christains and the opportunities in the Church open to converts” 3)

This assertion of a British presence in Palestine, which was nominally if corruptly ruled by the Ottoman Empire, was strongly promoted by Shaftesbury as a part of his zealous pursuit of what was to be known as Christian Zionism. Certainly these endeavours were motivated by the desire to show compassion for the sufferings of the Jews, to promote their welfare in Palestine and to demonstrate a spirit of Christian love and kindness, which would be markedly different from the contempt of earlier centuries. But at the same time, the millenial hopes for the conversion of the world beginning in Jerusalem played a significant role. In Shaftesbury’s view, this could best happen under the umbrella of British protection.

Inevitably, however, political circumstances in both Europe and Palestine came to affect such lofty ideals and the fortunes of this new Mission. By the 1850s the romantic notion that Britain could lead the cause of the restoration of God’s ancient people to the land of their forebears was being actively disputed by both Catholic France and Orthodox Russia in quarrels which played a role in causing the outbreak of the Crimean War. The conflation of religious and political considerations was, not for the last time, to prove both contentious and troubling for those seeking to bring the Kingdom of God nearer to hand.

The restoration project launched by these evangelicals was based on modern hopes and ancient promises. But by the middle of the nineteenth century, its momentum diminished. Certainly the major drawback was the reluctance and indeed obstruction of the Jewish authorities to participate in a Christian venture, however much they looked forward to a return next year to Jerusalem. In Palestine itself, the resident Jewish population proved determined to preserve its own identity. The Church’s Mission to the Jews was always peripheral, and the new Jerusalem bishopric became increasingly more involved instead with providing services to the Arab population, almost totally neglected and badly in need of health and education.

By comparison with other aspects of the European missionary expansion, the Missions to Israel had a narrower range. They could not boast of large-scale successes, nor could they be seen as part of the civilizing process of Europe’s widening empires. But, upheld by the stricter Calvinists’ belief in the election of the Jews to be God’s chosen people, and prompted by their millenarian expectations, the supporters of the mission expanded their mission stations and indeed received remarkably large donations for this purpose.

But few Jews, or Moslems, were converted to Christianity. The failure of the joint bishopric in the 1880s, due to nationalist pressures, only led to the conclusion that the evangelical impulse was better pursued by the individual missionary societies. In essence, however, the Christian presence in Israel became preoccupied with its own affairs, or catered to the ever-growing number of tourists. Mission to the Jews had to contend with the indifference of the majority Christians in the Holy Land, as indeed elsewhere. Indeed, in many countries, the object of missionary activity was as much to encourage warmth of Christian feelings towards the Jews as to promote Jewish faith in Christ.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the rise of Zionism as a political movement designed to attract Jews back to their former homeland, the overthrow in 1917 of Turkish rule, and the subsequent establishment of the British Mandate, opened a new chapter for Jewish missions. Reactions were mixed. Some of the missionaries welcomed Zionism for its idealism and purposeful resolve, and supported the revival of Jewish culture and society in Palestine. But others deplored the fact that the moral tone of Zionism was explicitly secular and even atheist. But even here, fervent evangelicals thought they might find a divine purpose. The decay of traditional Jewish faith and observance would surely create a spiritual vacuum which Hebrew Christianity would eventually fulfill. To read the inter-war reports of Jewish missions is to encounter a mood in which excitement and frustration mingled. There was undeniably a good deal of self-deception. Even those who claimed there was an increasing demand for the New Testament among the new settlers in Palestine could hardly deny that the growth of Hebrew Christianity was minuscule. Its limited success was almost entirely dependent on outside support and promotion. And worse was to follow. In Europe, the fatal rise of antisemitic hatred and violence, particularly in Russia, Poland and Germany was only infrequently opposed by mainline Christians. In Nazi Germany, its racist overtones blended with and were even supported by earnest Protestants and Catholics alike.

The professional missionaries to the Jews were early on alerted to the dangers of such bigotry. It made their efforts even more difficult, if not impossible. Their sympathy, arising out of eschatology and revivalism, was clearly not enough to protect Jews from Christian antisemitic zealots So too they were dismayed to find that many church authorities, especially in Germany, displayed an increasingly hostile attitude. Some of these church leaders even ceased to see the mission to the Jews as necessary or even justifiable. As one correspondent lamented as early as 1914: “When will the Judenmission at last cease to be the Cinderella of the Evangelical Church and the preserve of a tiny minority of pious Christians?” 4)

For their part the missionaries did what they could to engage their church opponents in a propaganda campaign to emphasize the positive values in Judaism. But they were handicapped by their inability to leave behind the attitudes of paternalism, superiority and supersessionism which effectively denied Judaism any future. This was the stance adopted by Germany’s most noted Protestant scholar in the late nineteenth century, Professor Adolf von Harnack, whose verdict was that Judaism was a “fossilized relic” destined to be replaced by the more progressive liberal Protestantism – a view which he widely propagated among the German middle classes.

Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the immediate implementation of sharp antisemitic measures placed the German missionary societies in extreme jeopardy. Their principal purpose directly contradicted the Nazis’ aim to make Germany judenrein. And though some Nazis approved of their desire to restore Jews to Palestine, their motives were entirely at cross purposes. Already at the end of the 1920s, the pro-Nazi faction in the German Evangelical Church – the so-called “German Christians” – openly called for repudiation of missions to the Jews, whom they regarded as a “profound danger for our racial and ethnic identity”. These churchmen welcomed the Nazis’ discriminatory legislation, and are not known to have raised any protests against the Nazi antisemitic fanaticism From 1933 on each and every appeal or utterance from the Judenmission was liable to misrepresentation or censure. The German Jewish Mission societies were faced, on the one hand, with the strident demands of the “German Christians” for the removal of all Jewish influences from German Protestantism, the excision of the Old Testament, the refusal of baptism for Jews, the expulsion of all “non-aryan” ministers and the so-called “purification” of all Church texts, hymnals and prayer books. 5)

On the other hand, the new government was quick to demonstrate its still more forcible hostility. Already by 1935 the Central Society for Jewish Missions (Zentralverein) and the Cologne Society of Friends of Israel were closed down by the Gestapo. A few months later the Leipzig Society dissolved itself. On Crystal Night in November 1938, the Berlin Society’s premises were ransacked. And in January 1941 the Gestapo ordered this mission to be dissolved, prohibited its activities and confiscated its property and bank accounts. Abandoned by its parent church, the Mission’s 130 years of witness was extinguished as an unwanted survival from the past, unfit for any place in the Nazi totalitarian and racist state.

To be sure, the minority of German Evangelicals who formed the Confessing Church vigorously upheld the right of Jews to join the church through baptism, and strenuously rejected any state interference with the church’s autonomy in defining its membership. But even the Confessing Church was too nationalistic to oppose the Nazis’ political goals. The result was a striking ambivalence. Martin Niemöller, for example, preached a traditional Lutheran anti-Judaism, at least until he was incarcerated in Dachau concentration camp. And even Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in 1933, would seem to have expressed the usual attribution of Jews being persecuted for their failure to acknowledge their Messiah. His later theological evolution was very much a singular experience, unshared by even his closest followers. 6)

After 1939, Hitler’s manic determination to eliminate the entire Jewish race led to the escalation, across the whole European continent, of campaigns of persecution, segregation, imprisonment and eventually mass murder. The Jewish Missions’ supporters were caught in an insoluble dilemma. They were virtually impotent to prevent or oppose these virulent antisemitic atrocities., which we now know as the Holocaust. Nevertheless true to their origins, they sought to find some theological explanation for such murderous violence. Some could even see Hitler as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzah. At the same time they struggled to avoid being infected or overawed by the regime’s massive and incessant antisemtic propaganda. Instead they strove to uphold their ideal that Christians had an obligation to bring the Gospel of Love to these sorely oppressed and persecuted Jewish victims. But, along with the rest of the German Evangelical Church, their silence or inaction in face of the Nazi crimes was notable. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted already in 1940: “the church was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying to heaven. She has witnessed the lawless application of brutal force, the physical and spiritual suffering of innocent people, oppression, hatred and murder, and she has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenceless brothers of Jesus Christ.” 7)

It was therefore left up to the supporters of Jewish Missions in other countries to denounce publicly the evil ideology which seemed to have captured the hearts and minds of so many Germans. The International Missionary Council’s Committee on the Christian approach to the Jew was unequivocal in deploring the effects of antisemitism. The bishops of the Church of England repeatedly called for government action to assist the stricken Jews of Europe, and the Church’s Mission to the Jews actively participated in relief efforts where possible. But the outbreak of war in 1939 cut off most opportunities for aid, and instead revealed the impotence of the churches to prevent the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Instead, emphasis was placed on plans for post-war reconstruction. The churches were called to embark on a re-Christianization of Europe to replace the spiritual corruption of Nazism and its pernicious ideology.

In 1945, when the Nazi dictatorship was overthrown, the surviving members of the German societies for mission to the Jews resolved to start again where they had been forced by the Nazis to leave off. At the end of 1945 the Zentralverein was resurrected. In 1947 the Berlin Israel Mission opened its doors again. By 1949 there were parallel organizations for the Lutheran churches in Frankfurt and Hannover. The International Missionary Council encouraged such revivals.

But, as their publications showed, the familiar themes of earlier Christian Mission to the Jews were once again repeated as though the Holocaust had neverhappened. Or if the terrible murder of six million Jews was mentioned, it was only as an inducement to renewed missionary efforts. The Jews, in their plight, seemed to be in even greater need of the Christian love and witness which these earnest and pious evangelists were offering. “We must discover”, declared the Director of the International Committee on the Christian approach to the Jew, “new and ethically legitimate methods and recognize and stress the responsibility of the churches for Jewish evangelism”. 8)

It is impossible to believe that such zealous enthusiasts for Christian mission to the Jews after the Holocaust had ever consulted the intended recipients of these endeavours. Had they done so, they would surely have been obliged to shed many of the illusions which they apparently still maintained. In 1945, for the majority of the surviving Jews, Europe was a charnel house. The bitter memories of the policies of the so-called Christian nations which had inflicted these terrors on them, and the minuscule amount of support and assistance which they had received from individual Christians, filled most of the remaining Jews with revulsion against what appeared to them to be the utter hypocrisy of such professions of loving-kindness. Jewish survival was their prime necessity. So these offers of conversion to Christianity, which so many held responsible for their dreadful fate, was doubly repugnant. It would be a disastrous betrayal of their identity. It would only serve to complete the “Final Solution” for the Jewish people. It was an impossible option.

It was notable that in these post-1945 missionary circles, with their still keen commitment to evangelize the Jews, there was a marked reluctance for many years to recognize the full implications of the Holocaust. For their part, the German supporters of Judenmission saw themselves as also being the victims of Nazi oppression. But any acknowledgment of guilt for the complicity of German Christianity in the Holocaust or their failure to prevent these crimes was long delayed. Only later did the Christian churches begin to be conscious that the Holocaust was not just a Jewish tragedy, but rather an event of enormous significance to the whole Christian church, which indeed raised excruciating questions about the credibility of Christianity. Over a decade was to pass before a theological reappraisal began, which eventually led to striking changes, in particular on the vital issue of Christian mission to the Jews.

The reluctance of these missionary circles to see the implications for the whole Christian community of the mass murders of Europe’s Jews meant that for several more years their publications repeated the traditional themes of Christian triumphalism, Judaism’s supersessionism, the reprobateness of the Jews’ rejection of their Messiah, and the desirability of conversion as an act of Christian beneficence. But in fact these conventional attitudes were to be fundamentally challenged by the events taking place on Christendom’s periphery in May 1948. In that month, the British Mandate in Palestine was disbanded and the creation or re-creation of the State of Israel was proclaimed. The impact was immediate and inescapable. Christian relations with Jews could never be the same again.

After more than two thousand years of political impotence and often banishment from their original homeland, Jews had succeeded once again in setting up their own state. It was a dream which had long eluded Christian potentates over many centuries. It signified the Jewish people’s re-emergence from powerlessness, and a new political dispensation for the Holy Land, so beloved by Christians as the very place where Jesus Christ was born and buried.

The shock of these events, and the success of the secular-led Zionist movement, was profound, especially among the Christian missionary community. To be sure a small group of liberal Protestants in the USA, for humanitarian reasons, welcomed the Zionist political achievement because it would offer a new haven for the Holocaust’s survivors. And subsequently, President Truman liked to believe that he fulfilled the biblical role of Cyrus in restoring the Jews to their homeland. But for the most part, the Christian churches reacted with confusion. The supporters of Christian Zionism,because of their philo-Judaism, trusted that the best face of Judaism would prevail in the new state, and that Christians would suffer no loss of religious freedom. But the societies for Jewish mission could not fail to see that this rival ideology of Zionism was sure to prove more attractive. And many of the missionaries in Palestine now became fearful for the future of their Arab parishioners. But principally, the missionary movement, and the Christian churches as a whole, were now obliged to face the fact of Jewish revival in a Jewish homeland, fulfilling what seemed to be Jewish biblical prophecies, even if under secular auspices.

The churches were thus obliged to recognize that one of their treasured and centuries-old beliefs, that the Jews’ expulsion from the Holy Land was a sign of divine punishment for their alleged crime in putting Jesus to death, was no longer valid. On the contrary, the visible revival of Judaism and its embodiment in the state of Israel, clearly contradicted the Christian theological myth of Jewish national demise. The churches and their missionary bodies were now forced to find a new basis for theological concepts of Israel and its significance for Christian doctrine.

This was a major challenge. Not since the defeat of the Crusaders centuries before had the churches found it necessary to rethink their basic presuppositions about the Holy Land. In the meanwhile Protestants particularly had resorted to evasive tactics. For many of the more liberal Protestants such terms as the Promised Land, Zion, Jerusalem or Israel had been universalized or spiritualized. They were applied metaphorically rather than geographically. William Blake could build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land, while in John Newton’s hymn, “Glorious things of thee were spoken/Zion city of our God”, but no connection was made whatsoever to the Middle East.

Other Protestants continued to regard Palestine purely as a historical museum, useful for guided tours of the Christian holy sites of two thousand years ago. Many were keenly committed to preserving the image of shepherds, donkeys, vineyards and fig trees. Such pious endeavours had no interest in the vibrant activity of rebirth undertaken by the Jewish settlers, affirming in a highly positive but modernistic way their own concept of how to redeem the land.
So too the missionaries of the mainstream Christian churches based in Palestine – the majority of whose adherents were Arab – quickly adopted a critical attitude towards the changes brought about by the State of Israel’s rapid expansion. After the expulsions and injustices suffered by many of the indigenous Arab populations, Christian humanitarian concerns were widely expressed, and continue to be expressed. But there was certainly a political partisanship involved, which effectively placed a barrier against facing the theological issues of a revived Israel and its future destiny. It was many years before any Christian body, let alone any missionary society, could begin to regard the restoration of Israel as a positive step, or one which could become a source of theological renewal for Christians and Jews alike

By the end of the 1950s, a gradual world-wide recognition had taken place of the enormity of the crimes perpetrated against the Jewish people during the second world war. As the historical details of the German atrocities were spelled out, the term Holocaust came into use to describe the whole corpus of Jewish sufferings from 1933 to 1945. But it was not until the 1960s that the repercussions of these events for the Christian churches, Christian theology and Christian missions came to be acknowledged. There was a reluctant but nevertheless inescapable process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung for the fateful role of the churches during these traumatic years. But the tentative acceptance of these insights did not yet lead to a radical rethinking of the inherited theological bases of Christian missionary activity. Resolute condemnations of (other people’s) antisemitism were only half the battle. What was needed was a much more far-reaching theological re-orientation, or even the contradiction of what the churches had preached and practised for centuries.

The major factor for such a change taking place was the combined impact of the feelings of guilt about Christian complicity in the Nazi crimes and the re-creation of the State of Israel. The American theologian Paul van Buren may well be right in claiming that neither of these two events alone could have caused such a change. Only when the shock of the horror of the Holocaust was coupled with the other, even greater theological shock of the existence of a Jewish state, do we begin to see the first reversals of the church’s teachings about the Jews. 9)

One of the main hurdles to be overcome was the long-held belief that the Church had replaced the Jews as God’s Chosen people, and that Christians had inherited the covenant relationship, leaving behind Judaism merely as a fossilized relic in the limbo of history. Such a view had led to the widespread teaching of contempt for Judaism, against which the French scholar Jules Isaac had raised his voice in 1946. But abandoning the supersessionist view had major implications for the Judenmission. Already in the 1930s the English theologian James Parkes had argued on these grounds for the cessation of Christian missions to the Jews. He was ignored as a maverick and isolated clergyman with extreme views. But by the 1960s, German theologians of repute were beginning to voice the same opinions. In 1961, at the time of the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, a new forum within the large-scale Protestant Rally or Kirchentag in Berlin took the unprecedented step of calling for a new relationship between Christians and Jews, and even invited Jewish rabbis and scholars to take part. Their working party’s statement unequivocally and unprecedentally stated: “Jews and Christians were indissolubly bound together”. But the consequences were also drawn: “At the present moment, especially in Germany, the right form for a new meeting with Israel is dialogue not mission”. 10)

Such statements were of course strongly challenged by the supporters of the Judenmission, as well as by conservative Christians of many denominations. They seemed to repudiate the whole missionary enterprise world-wide. Within the German Evangelical Church the debate became quite heated. The supporters of the traditional mission accused their critics of a sell-out of an essential component of the Christian faith, and a capitulation to what was now becoming seen as “politically correct”. They refused to be persuaded that historical circumstances, however catastrophic, could be used to revise traditionally established Christian doctrine, or to justify the abandonment of the church’s continuing missionary responsibilities.

The advocates of a new stance, however, were convinced that only a new approach to the Jews based on a position of penitence and at least verbal reparation, could restore the tattered shreds of Christian credibility. They were extremely sensitive to the argument widely heard in Jewish circles that the terrible events of the Holocaust had been the result, at least in part, of the accumulated hatreds of nineteen centuries of Christian prejudice, despite the evident efforts of most missionaries to combat such bigotry. They could not fail to see that, from the point of view of the Jewish recipients, the well-meaning endeavoiurs of Christian missionaries were indistinguishable from more sinister forces. Or as the Jewish scholar Raul Hilberg expressed it:

“The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The German Nazis had at last decreed: You have no right to live.” 11)

To many of the more open theologians, the only way to overcome the burden of this dreadful legacy was to call for an entirely new beginning. They were to be greatly encouraged and assisted by similar efforts being undertaken at the same time by the Catholic Church in the much more public forum of the Second Vatican Council. The 1965 document produced as a result, known as Nostra Aetate, was a ground-breaking and indeed astonishing reversal of Catholic doctrines inherited from the past. As such it was greeted by the more progressive Protestant theologians as a fine example of what the new spirit of Christian ecumenism could lead to.

Most striking was the assertion in Nostra Aetate of the community of the inheritance shared by Jews and Christians. The former should be regarded as the elder brothers of the latter, and treated with all due respect. The ancient calumny of the charge of deicide, or Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus, which had contributed so frequently to popular polemic and violence against the Jews, was no longer to be attributed collectively or applied to later generations. The strong desire for reconciliation and dialogue clearly repudiated much of the traditional missionary approach. And successive Popes since the Second Vatican Council have repeatedly pronounced their support of these objectives.

As for the Protestants, the 1970s saw a vigorous debate on the subject of missions. To be sure, the traditionalists had to acknowledge that Jews could no longer be regarded merely as the objects of missionary endeavour, however charitably intended. Instead, they were now partners whose voices needed to be heard in dialogue. Both faiths needed to explore their common roots and identity. So attempts to convert by stressing the superiority of either faith could only be harmful. In 1975 the national authorities of the German Evangelical Church produced a study of the issues, Juden und Christen, which clearly outlined the gap between the advocates of mission and those of dialogue. But there was a growing feeling that the defenders of the older position were fighting a rearguard battle. Churchmen in many countries were increasingly conscious that the events of the Holocaust with the millions of Jewish deaths for which Christians were at least in some measure responsible, made the repetition of earlier formulations of Christian witness and mission unacceptable and theologically incorrect.

The most notable expression of this new sentiment came in the declaration issued in January 1980 by the Synod of the Rhineland Evangelical Church: “On the renewal of the relationship between Christians and Jews”. Here was an explicit admission of Christian co-responsibility and guilt for the Holocaust. Further the clear-cut claim was made that the continued existence of the Jewish people, their restoration to the Promised Land, and the creation of the State of Israel, should be regarded as the signs of God’s continuing faithfulness towards His chosen people. As a result the Synod concluded:

“We believe in the continuing election of the Jewish people as God’s people and recognize that the church through Jesus Christ has been incorporated into God’s covenant with His people.”

But the most striking paragraph was that which firmly called for a renunciation of the traditional forms of mission:

“We believe that Jews and non-Jews are each in their respective calling witnesses of God before the world, and before each other; therefore we are convinced that the church may not express its witness towards the Jewish people in the same manner as its mission towards other peoples of the world”. 12)

The impact of this pronouncement was profound. It reinforced the growing feeling that the old style of missions with its triumphalist connotations and one-sided assertion of Christian superiority had to be discarded. Eventually such considerations came to be accepted by the supporters of the Judenmission themselves. In 1985 the authorities of the Evangelisch-lutherisch Zentralverein für Mission unter Israel changed the name of the association to the more palatable “Christian Society for witness and service amongst Jews and Christians”. No alteration of the Society’s objectives was intended. The change was solely to avoid misunderstandings, particularly where the word “mission” could be wrongly seen as advocating proselytism. Furthermore, the authorities wished to draw a clear line between their approach to the Jews and to other religions. Their objective remained to strive for a better knowledge of Christianity among Jews, and a better knowledge of Judaism among Christians. Their biblical support was drawn from Romans 1:16: “it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the Greek”.

But in fact, only five years later in 1991, when the Society met again n Leipzig where it had been founded 120 years earlier, a more critical note was sounded. The position paper resulting from this meeting acknowledged that no real change of heart had taken place in the post-1945 years. The resulting isolation of the missionary society from other branches of the German Evangelical Church had only led to a polarization of views. Not until the late 1970s when the post-Auschwitz situation (Shoah/Holocaust) came to be more fully recognized could a genuine new start be made. But now the missionary society’s faults had been honestly faced.

“Looking back on its 120 year history, it has be acknowledged that the Society’s course has been burdened by numerous failures. To be sure, the work of the Society for Jewish missions was carried out in ways not nowadays understood or appreciated. From the beginning, love of the people of Israel and a respect for its special place in salvation history were characteristic of the Society’s endeavours. But this was repeatedly linked to a lack of appreciation for the Jewish faith, and even adopted anti-Judaic or antisemitic ideas and sentiments. When the Jewish people suffered their greatest distress, during their persecution by the Nazis, the supporters of this Society did not find the strength or the courage to confront the oppressors or to make common cause with the oppressed. So the Central Society has to admit to its share in the guilt of the Christian churches towards the Jewish people.

All this became clearer to us during the recent decades as we seek to renew our witness and service. We have been obliged to rethink our positions and to root out any elements of superiority, of contempt or of anti-Judaism in general. So we can only acknowledge that the 120 years of our history contain both elements of continuity and discontinuity . . . .

We acknowledge that the term Mission to the Jews has become so compromised and misunderstood that it is no longer suitable to express the Society’s real purposes. Indeed we are aware that for many of our Jewish counterparts the use of the term Judenmission arouses great mistrust since they see this as only as a continuation of “the Holocaust by other means”. Instead we therefore wish to substitute the concepts of witness and service which express for us far better our desire to encounter the Jewish people with all due respect and trust”. 13 )

In a similar fashion, other branches of the Missions to Israel followed suit. The oldest English-language group, the London Society, formerly the Church’s Mission to the Jews, changed its name to the Church’s Ministry among the Jewish people. The 1988 Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion received a report clearly rejecting any idea of missions to Jewish people. The same spirit was reciprocated elsewhere. Missions to Israel in their traditional form have now become a matter of past history. It was the end of a 200 year history of pious hopes, misguided endeavours and mistaken interpretations of the Christian faith. But it opened the way for new opportunities of encounter between Jews and Christians, when members of both faiths would join in worshipping the same God, and seeking to establish His Kingdom on earth. As a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, said:

“Judaism and Christianity have so much in common which is essential for the very life of the world that we should regard it as the truth of which we are common trustees and together we should make its light shine” 14)

The legacy of past prejudices, recriminations and conversion attempts has been abandoned, and has been replaced by a much more sensitive concern for the victims of violence and persecution. It is much to be hoped that on this basis Jews and Christians will collaborate in striving for the future preservation of the world entrusted to their care in the spirit of righteousness, justice and peace.

Footnotes

1) for general surveys, see Barbara Tuchman, The Bible and the Sword. England and Palestine from the Bronze Age to Balfour, New York 1956; Christopher M.Clark, The Politics of Conversion. Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia, 1728-1941, Oxford 1994.
2) John S.Conway, “The Jerusalem Bishopric: A ‘union of Foolscap and Blotting Paper’ in Studies in Religion, Vol 7 Summer 1978, 305-15.
3) Patrick Irwin, “Bishop Alexander and the Jews of Jerusalem’ in Studies in Church History, Vol. 21: Persecution and Toleration, ed. W.J.Shields, Oxford 1984,p. 318.
4) quoted in R. Gutteridge, Open Thy Mouth for the Dumb, Oxford 1976, p. 329.
5) see Doris Bergen, The Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich, Chapel Hill 1996.
6) see Wolfgang Gerlach, And the Witnesses were silent. The Confessing Church and the Jews, New York 2002; also E.Bethge,’Dietrich Bonhoeffer und die Juden’ in ed. E. Todt, Konsequenzen. Dietrich Bonhoeffers Kirchenverständnis heute, Munich 1980
7) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, Eng. trans London 1955, p. 45-50.
8) International Missionary Council’s committee on the Christian approach towards the Jew, Basle Switzerland, June 1947 report, p. 5, 16.
9) Paul van Buren, “Changes in Christian Theology’, in ed. H.Friedlander and S.Milton, The Holocaust, Ideology, Bureaucracy and Genocide, New York 1980, p. 286.
10) ed. D.Goldschmidt and H-J. Kraus, Der ungekündigte Bund. Neue Begegnung von Juden und Christliche Gemeinde, Stuttgart 1963, p. 141; see also ed H.Gollwitzer and E.Sterling, Das gespaltene Gottesvolk, Stuttgart 1965.
11) Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jewry, rev.ed. 3 vols., New York 1985, Vol. 1, p.8-9.
12) Zur Erneuerung des Verhältnisses von Christen und Juden. An English translation of the official text is contained in ed. A Brockway, The Theology of the Churches and the Jewish People: Statements by the World Council of Churches and Its Member Churches, Geneva 1988, p. 92-4.
13) ed. A Baumann, Auf dem Wege zum christlich- jüdischen Gespräch, Münster 1998, pp 220 ff.
14) 1992 sermon.

Dear Colleagues,

John Conway is on vacation this month. He has asked me to edit the
Newsletter in his absence, which I am happy to do. Below you will find two
reviews by me on books addressing Christian-Jewish relations. Should you
have any comments please feel free to e-mail me at mhockeno@skidmore.edu.

Best Wishes,
Matthew Hockenos
History Department
Skidmore College

Contents:

Book Reviews

1) Irving Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter
between Judaism and Christianity (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication
Society, 2004).
2) John C. Merkle (ed.), Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews
and Judaism (Collegeville, MN: The Order of Saint Benedict, 2003).

1) Greenberg, For the Sake of Heaven and Earth

Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s steadfast and courageous efforts over the past
four decades to promote a new understanding between Christians and Jews has
rightfully earned him the reputation as one of the most significant
contributors to the post-Shoah Christian-Jewish dialogue. For the Sake of
Heaven and Earth is a collection of nine of his essays on the encounter
between Judaism and Christianity, seven of which were published previously
between 1967 and 2000. Although reading these essays in chronological
order provides a wonderful sense of the development of Greenberg’s thought,
it is remarkable how constant his emphasis on pluralism and dialogue has
been over the years. The collection ends with brief response essays,
mostly praising Greenberg’s efforts, by five renowned scholars of
Jewish-Christian relations: James Carroll, David Novak, Michael Novak, Mary
C. Boys, and Krister Stendahl. There is also a useful seven-page study
guide, which provides study questions intended to facilitate comprehension.

The first two essays in this collection are the two written most
recently. One is a fascinating autobiographical account detailing the
development of Greenberg’s unwavering belief in the need for both Jews and
Christians to develop new theologies of Christianity and Judaism that
eschew the negative stereotypes of the other. Although he is emphatically
clear that it is Christian theologians and church leaders who have the most
work to do in overcoming the church’s nearly 2000-year-old practice of
teaching contempt for Jews, he also unflinchingly calls for Jews to revise
their unflattering depiction of Christianity, especially the claim that
Jesus Christ was a false Messiah. Greenberg acknowledges repeatedly his
respect and admiration for many Christian theologians, in particular Alice
and Roy Eckardt, who over the years have challenged the claims of Jesus’
absolute status and rejected outright Christian assertions of
supersessionism and triumphalism. The Eckardts’ willingness to repudiate
some of Christianity’s most central tenets, despite relentless attacks on
their theology by Christian colleagues, has inspired Greenberg to set forth
his own controversial views on the relationship between Jews and
Christians. The Orthodox Jewish community, of which Greenberg is an
enthusiastic participant, has for the most part not welcomed his insights,
but Greenberg has persevered nevertheless.

In the second of the new essays, “Covenantal Partners in a Postmodern
World,” Greenberg provides a historical narrative of the encounter between
Judaism and Christianity over the centuries in order to demonstrate that
God intended both faiths to play a role in God’s plan to perfect the
world. This essay as well as others that were published in the late 1990s
and appear at the end of this volume represent Greenberg’s most current
perspective on the relationship between faiths in the post-Shoah or
postmodern world. Although he is concerned primarily with Christians and
Jews working together in an evolving covenantal partnership with God, he
also stresses the importance for them to work with other faiths as
well. The challenges of materialism, secularism, and terrorism, he
recognizes, are too great for Jews and Christians to tackle alone. “Jews
and Christians must recognize that the two faiths together cannot
accomplish the full task [of perfecting the world]. Once they admit this
truth, they can respect other faiths as well” (101). Greenberg
acknowledges that for Jews to affirm Christianity as a necessary partner in
this process, Christians must first act like loving brothers and sisters
and repudiate those aspects of the Christian tradition that degrade Jews
and Judaism. “The two [faiths] must realize that the more they overcome
the demons of the past, the more they become God’s witnesses, channels of
divine blessing for a suffering humanity, couriers of redemption” (101).

Fundamental to Greenberg’s theology is the belief that certain historical
events the advent of modernity, the Holocaust, and the founding of the
State of Israel have led to a new encounter between Christians and Jews
and a new understanding of the covenantal relationship with God. As early
as the 1960s Greenberg first began to wrestle seriously with the meaning of
the Holocaust. In contrast to other theologians who concluded that God was
dead, absent, or powerless, he contended that “God’s self-restraint in not
preventing the Holocaust was a divine cry to humans to step up and stop the
evil; it was time for the human partner to take greater responsibility in
the unfolding of the covenant and the redemption of the world” (91). The
covenant God made with Abraham entered a new stage first after the
destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. and then again after the
Holocaust. In the aftermath of the Holocaust God no longer related to the
Jewish people by imposing obligations or unreasonable demands to live by a
higher standard than other people. “The covenant of demand (for higher
standards of behavior from Jews) had been morally passed through the fires
of the Holocaust – and found wanting” (27).

The covenant between God and the Jews became voluntary asserts
Greenberg. God no longer commanded, he invited; God invited the Jewish
people to take greater responsibility for overcoming the contradiction
between the divine dream and unredeemed reality. Greenberg hypothesizes
that God is less visible at critical times in order to evoke greater
participation by Jews (and all people) in their own history. Greenberg
maintains that God entered into a covenant of partnership with people so
that they could play a role in their own liberation and in repairing the
world (tikun olam). “In the Holocaust,” he writes, “Jews discovered they
had no choice but to go back into history. If they did not take power,
they would be dead” (158). The urgency with which Jews sought to establish
the State of Israel exemplifies for Greenberg their strong desire to
control their lives and the acceptance of a new stage in their covenantal
relationship with God. Greenberg urged Christians, especially after their
apathy and silence at the time of the 1967 Six-Day War, to join Jews in
defending the State of Israel and playing a more active role in repairing
the world.

That some Christians, twenty years after the Holocaust, were beginning to
acknowledge Christian responsibility for the Holocaust signaled the
potential, according to Greenberg, for a new stage in Christian-Jewish
relations the stage of pluralism. Greenberg’s notion of pluralism, which
developed over the years to include multiple faiths, can be traced to his
early use of the concept in his 1967 essay, “The New Encounter of Judaism
and Christianity.” In this essay the concept of pluralism referred simply
to Jews and Christians living together peacefully out of love for God
(120). If Jews and Christians could live together, despite their
passionate commitments, this would act as a model for all peoples and
demonstrate the positive role that religion can play in the world. For
this to be possible, Greenberg realized, both Jews and Christians must
profoundly rethink their relationship to one another. They must talk to
one another in a frank, open, and loving manner. In the late 1960s, when
the Christian-Jewish dialogue was just getting underway, Greenberg’s
understanding of pluralism was undeveloped and his optimism about the
prospects of the Jewish-Christian dialogue was reserved.

Two decades later in his 1986 essay, “Toward an Organic Model of the
Relationship,” Greenberg is far more optimistic. Here he envisioned a
model of the relationship of Judaism and Christianity that would allow both
Jews and Christians to “affirm the fullness of the faith-claims of the
other, not just offer tolerance” (146). But how would it be possible for
Jews to affirm the faith-claims of Christians, in particular that Jesus
Christ was the Messiah? Greenberg argues that a fundamental characteristic
of Judaism is that it generates messianic expectations. “Judaism has built
into its own self-understanding that it must generate future messianic
moments” (148). Thus Jews should recognize that the early Christians “were
thinking like faithful Jews when they recognized Jesus” (149). The
relationship between Jews and Christians faltered when the former referred
to Jesus as a “false” messiah and the latter referred to Jesus as _the_
messiah and claimed that Christians now superceded Jews as God’s chosen
people. Greenberg believes that Jews and Christians should abandon these
claims and acknowledge that Jesus was a messiah a “failed messiah”
(152). “A failed messiah,” according to Greenberg, “is one who has the
right values and upholds the covenant, but does not attain the final goal
[of perfecting the world]” (153). Although Greenberg’s concept of a
failed messiah has yet to be accepted widely by Jews or Christians, it is
one example of Greenberg’s innovative approaches to developing ways to
improve the relationship between the two faiths.

Many more Christians and Jews are likely to be receptive to Greenberg’s
concept of “covenantal pluralism and partnership,” which he has developed
most recently. His argument is quite simple. God established a permanent
universal covenant, the Noahide covenant, with all of humanity after the
Flood. In this covenant God agreed to sustain humanity and to look after
its welfare despite its sinful nature. In addition to this universal
covenant open to all people who want to take part in God’s plan, God
initiates particular covenants with specific groups of people. God does
this because “The best way to instruct people to raise their standards of
ethics and relationship to the Divine . . . is to inspire them with a
human model that freely and lovingly sets an example” (57). Moreover, the
particularization of the universal covenant through God’s initiation of a
covenantal relationship with smaller national groups, such as the Jews,
allows for “varied pathways” toward redemption. Thus particular covenants,
such as the Abrahamic covenant, are different from the universal covenant
because they are rooted in culture, language, and history. Greenberg
believes that Christianity is another particular covenant that God called
into being in order to engage a greater number of people in God’s plan to
redeem the world. Most importantly, just as the Abrahamic covenant did not
supercede the Noahide covenant, the covenant God establishes with
Christianity in no way diminishes his earlier covenant with the Jews.
Tikun olam (the repairing of the world), according to Greenberg, depends
on more than simply Jewish and Christian tolerance or even acceptance of
the other’s covenant. The monumental task of redeeming the world requires
partnership between Jews, Christians, as well as people of other
faiths. “Partnership goes one step further [than pluralism], Greenberg
writes in his 1999 essay, “Pluralism and Partnership.” “This concept of
partnership suggests that my truth/faith system alone cannot fulfill God’s
dreams. Therefore the world needs the contribution that the other makes
for the world’s own wholeness and perfection.” In this concept of
partnership one sees most clearly the dramatic development of Greenberg’s
thought and his optimism that if the wounds of the past can be healed “then
Judaism and Christianity in partnership could lead the world toward
messianic accomplishments in upgrading human life, dignity, and peace”
(47).
2) Merkle (ed.), Faith Transformed

Faith Transformed: Christian Encounters with Jews and Judaism is a
collection of autobiographical essays by eleven Catholic and Protestant
biblical scholars, historians, and theologians who address how their
encounters with Jews and Judaism and their participation in the
Christian-Jewish dialogue have influenced their understanding of the two
faiths. John C. Merkle, editor of the collection and a professor of
theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University in
Minnesota, states in the introduction that his intention was to bring
together in one text the personal narratives of Christian scholars whose
understanding of Christianity and Judaism have been dramatically
transformed by their contact with Jews and Jewish scholarship. Students
and scholars interested in Jewish-Christian relations will no doubt find
the personal accounts in this thin volume engrossing. Read as one piece
these essays provide an overview of the history of the Jewish-Christian
dialogue in the United States following the Holocaust. Of particular
interest to the reader will be the various pathways that led these
Christians to the dialogue. The autobiographical accounts are followed by
a ten-paragraph statement, “A Sacred Obligation: Rethinking Christian Faith
in Relation to Judaism and the Jewish People,” by the Christian Scholars
Group on Christian-Jewish Relations, of which all the contributors to this
collection are members. Irvin J. Borowsky, a Jewish scholar and chairman
of the American Interfaith Institute, brings the volume to a close with an
afterword praising the work of the various contributors and encouraging
Christians to use the Contemporary English Version (CEV) translation of the
Bible, which he deems more accurate and less anti-Judaic.

Although each of the narratives is unique and each of the authors draw
distinct conclusions based on his or her personal experience, there are
several common themes that are addressed repeatedly. Nearly all of the
contributors begin by noting how little contact they had while growing up
with practicing Jews or living Judaism. Many of the authors had little
knowledge of Judaism and the knowledge they did have came from
church-school lessons, which prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65)
taught that Judaism was a fossilized religion that it had been superceded
by Christianity. Norman Beck, professor of theology and classical
languages at Texas Lutheran University, writes that although he was aware
of Jews living in the neighborhood near where he attended college in
Columbus Ohio, “there was virtually nothing about Jews as such in the
curriculum of that time” (72). Clark Williamson, professor emeritus of
Christian thought at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis,
acknowledges that even after receiving his PhD from the University of
Chicago Divinity School “I had not tumbled to the fact that the
anti-Jewish, supersessionist tradition of the Church is a problem” (93).

Several other contributors, however, who attended graduate school during or
after the Second Vatican Council were drawn into the Christian-Jewish
dialogue via their dissertations written on topics that addressed
Jewish-Christian relations. Captivated and intrigued by the issues raised
by Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate (the Declaration on the Relation of the
Church to Non-Christian Religions) contributors Eugene Fisher, executive
director of the Secretariat for Catholic-Jewish Relations, Michael McGarry,
rector at the Tantur Ecumenical Center in Jerusalem, and John Pawlikowski,
professor of social ethics at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago,
refer to Vatican II and their years in graduate school when they began to
read Jewish authors such as Abraham Joshua Heschel as formative experiences.

Friendships with Jews motivated several of the essayists to participate in
the Jewish-Christian dialogue. Walter Harrelson, professor emeritus of
Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University, recalls how his involvement in the
struggle for racial justice brought him into contact with local rabbis and
Jewish leaders in Nashville. “These interfaith struggles for a better
community brought deepened respect for Jews, brought close personal
friendships between my family and several Jewish families, and began my
personal effort to enrich my understanding of Judaism – living Judaism”
(5). For Eva Fleischner, professor emerita of religion at Montclair State
University, the invitation by a Jewish friend to celebrate Shabbat with her
family brought her “into contact for the first time with a living Judaism;
with Jews – modern American Jews – whose faith deeply informed their lives”
(42). Franklin Sherman, professor emeritus of Jewish Christian Studies at
Muhlenberg College, describes his encounter, first through his writings and
then in person, with Heschel as a “great turning point” in his
understanding of Judaism.

These scholarly and personal encounters with Jews and Judaism, as well as
intense reflection on Christian involvement in the Shoah, inspired many of
the contributors to radically reexamine their commitment to traditional
Christian doctrine. While there is something to be learned from all the
essays, the narratives of Alice Eckardt, Eva Fleischner, Mary Boys, and
John Merkle are particularly illuminating.

Alice Eckardt, often in collaboration with husband Roy Eckardt until his
death in 1998, is a pioneer in Jewish-Christian relations. Eckardt recalls
that she had little awareness of Christian antisemitism when she was
growing up or going to Oberlin College. To be sure, American newspaper
coverage of the liberation of the death camps in Europe in 1945 alarmed her
but it was not immediately apparent that the Christian anti-Jewish
tradition had had any influence on the mistreatment and murder of Jews. As
she says, “Neither Roy’s nor my secular and religious education (not even
Roy’s divinity school courses) had taught us any of this Christian
anti-Jewish tradition” (20). The realization by the Eckardts of a
deep-seated anti-Jewish polemic at the core of Christianity occurred in the
mid- to late-1940s while Roy research and wrote his dissertation, which
addressed the various church theologies concerning Jews and Judaism. This
led to a lifetime commitment by both to root out all vestiges of
anti-Judaism and antisemitism from Christian theology.

Living by the motto that good theology cannot be based on bad history Alice
Eckardt has spent much of her life correcting misunderstandings at the core
of many people’s understanding of Christianity. She address, in
particular, the belief held by many that “the Jews” crucified Jesus and
have fallen out of favor with God because of their disobedience. During
the late 1960s and early 1970s she examined, among other things, the early
Christian period when many of the church’s anti-Judaic tenets were
developed. The victories by the Romans and the destruction of the
Jerusalem Temple in the first century led many Christians to the erroneous
conclusion that God was punishing the Jews because of their failure to
recognize Christ as the messiah. In light of the creation of the State of
Israel after the Holocaust, Eckardt “suggested that we might look at ‘the
newly gathered Israel’ as a ‘sign that God is faithful to his promise and
that the call of God to the people of Israel is irrevocable'” (25). Part
and parcel with her repudiation of supersessionism, Eckardt also sought to
develop a Christian theology that in the aftermath of the Holocaust would
no longer assert that the crucifixion of Jesus constituted the ultimate in
human suffering and godforsakenness. The unprecedented suffering that
characterized the Holocaust has led a number of Christians to agree with
Eckardt that, “we must give up trying to find . . . anything salvational in
events of suffering” (29).

Eckardt acknowledges the important influence that Hans Jonas, a German Jew
and student of both Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, has had on her
understanding of God as a _suffering_ God. “With Jonas I am convinced that
_only_ a suffering God, One who continues to suffer with human beings, can
speak to us since the Shoah’s whirlwind of destruction, and that we
mortals, empowered by God, have the obligation to help each other overcome
suffering and thereby ‘help the suffering immortal God'” (29). To the
question “where was God?” Eckardt would agree with Rabbi Irving Greenberg
that God was there in Auschwitz suffering with his people. For Eckardt,
the suffering of God and his people in the Holocaust was a clarion call to
all of humanity, and Christians in particular, to take action to end
suffering.

Catholic theologian Eva Fleischner grew up in Vienna, the daughter of a
Catholic mother and Jewish father. She was raised a Catholic, attending a
Dominican school in Vienna until 1938 when her parents sent her to a
convent school in England to be out of harm’s way. Five years later she
joined her parents in the United States, where she began studying at
Radcliffe College at the age of eighteen. Despite having a Jewish father
she remembers that “my acquaintance with Judaism as a living faith remained
non-existent” – her Jewish friends and relatives were all secular Jews (37).
During and after college Fleischner remained devoted to the Catholic Church
and its doctrine even as she studied other religions and read deeply in the
Hebrew Scriptures, especially the psalms. “To use today’s terminology,”
she acknowledges, “I must reluctantly admit that I was a typical Christian
‘supersessionist,’ believing that the Hebrew Scriptures derived their value
exclusively from their pointing to Christ” (38). It was only in the 1960s
while pursuing a PhD in Christian historical theology at Marquette
University, a Jesuit institution, that she was introduced to the theme of
Christian anti-Judaism and the teaching of contempt for Jews and
Judaism. After a period of intense reading and reflection on the Shoah,
studying Jewish perspectives on Judaism, and building friendships with
Jews, Fleischner concluded that the survival of the Jewish people was based
on their deep sense of Jewish identity “that I trace back to Sinai and the
Jewish covenant with God” (43). She went on to write a dissertation on the
attitude of German Christian theologians toward Judenmission, the
Christian churches’ missionary effort to convert Jews to
Christianity. This excellent study was published in 1975 as Judaism in
German Christian Theology Since 1945: Christianity and Israel Considered in
Terms of Mission.

Fleischner’s research on Judenmission and her belief that Christians can
learn from Judaism has led her to call for Christians to openly renounce
proselytizing Jews and to pray that Judaism continues to flourish. “I have
become convinced,” she writes, “that religious pluralism is not some
inevitable but passing phenomenon, to be endured temporarily in a time of
theological turmoil, but rather a positive development, part of the very
stuff of salvation” (48).

Mary Boys, a professor of practical theology at Union Theological Seminary,
recalls how in her youth her knowledge of Jews and Judaism was
contradictory. On the one hand, her Catholic education relied on the
catechism prior to Vatican II, which portrayed Judaism as a dead religion
and Catholicism as the only true living faith. On the other hand, any
off-putting images of Jews she learned in the classroom or at Church were
offset by her family’s close friendship with a Jewish woman. The Second
Vatican Council, which coincided with her last three years of high school,
also had a major impact on her. “Belonging to a Church opening its windows
to let in fresh air animated my interest in religion, and provided a major
motivation for my lifelong professional work in religious education”
(164). In 1965 she joined the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary
and though deeply committed to Catholicism also began to read Jewish
authors, including Abraham Heschel’s book on the prophets. Following
graduation and a five-year teaching stint she entered the PhD program in
religion and education at Union Theological Seminary and Teachers College
at Columbia University.

In similar fashion to some of the other essayists, Boys first began to
grapple with issues of anti-Judaism and antisemitism in graduate
school. Her studies focused on the Church’s emergence from Judaism and she
“realized with increasing dismay the chasm between the findings of biblical
scholars and theologians and what preachers and teachers were saying”
(167). Although these academic pursuits were enlightening, she credits her
friendships with Jews and several trips to Israel as the seminal
experiences that brought about a transformation in her understanding of
Judaism. In particular was Boys’s close collaboration with Jewish
educators like Sara S. Lee, director of the Rhea Hirsch School of Education
at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, that
convinced her that “interreligious learning” must be a key component to
improving Jewish-Christian relations. Interreligious learning, Boys
believes, “takes dialogue to a greater depth by involving persons in a
relationship of mutual study” (171).

Through these interreligious encounters Boys acknowledges coming
face-to-face with the incomprehensibility of God and the finitude of the
Catholic tradition. Anyone who engages earnestly in interreligious
dialogue and mutual study, she suggests, cannot but humbly conclude that
God alone is absolute and infinite and that all faiths are limited and
incomplete. She writes, “Even as I believe ardently in the Way of
Christianity and aspire to live it as a practicing Roman Catholic, I know
it does not exhaust the paths by which God draws us and I cannot believe
it is the superior way by which God calls all to walk” (175). For this
reason she expresses consternation with the August 2000 declaration,
Dominus Iesus, drafted by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of
Faith headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The declaration is highly
suspicious of pluralism and tends to equate pluralism with relativism.
Boys supports religious pluralism only when it is rooted in what she calls
“textured particularism.” Textured particularism implies a person who is
committed to his or her particular faith, passionate about its traditions,
and seriously immersed in its practices but also receptive to other
faiths. “A rich and receptive particularism is necessary for developing a
religious identity that is simultaneously rooted and adaptive, assured and
ambiguous one that allows for engagement with pluralism” (176). A deep
understanding and devotion to one’s tradition, Boys believes, will also
involve understanding the finitude of its beliefs and practices. Pluralism
rooted in textured particularism involves a desire to learn from
differences in belief without adopting those differences as your own.

The final narrative is by the editor himself, John Merkle, whose first
serious encounter with Judaism was also academic. While attending graduate
school at the Catholic University of Louvain in the early 1970s he read a
number of modern Jewish philosophers and theologians including Leo Baeck,
Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Emmanuel Levinas, Will Herberg, and, of
course, Heschel. Stunned to find virtually nothing in these books in
common with Christian perspectives on Judaism, Merkle recalls, “I was
shaken to the foundations of my spiritual life by the realization that my
Church had established its identity over against a misrepresented Judaism”
(183). Heschel, in particular, was effective at transforming Merkle’s
understanding of Judaism from the religion of the Old Testament to a
religion characterized by vitality, diversity, community, and covenantal
renewal. Friendships and academic collaborations with Jews served to
reinforce his newfound conviction in the “enduring vitality of Jewish
covenantal life” (186).

Merkle insists, as do many Christians who have also come to understand
Judaism as one way to experience a covenantal relationship with God, that
Church doctrine and practice must continue to be reformed. Although this
process began with Vatican II in the early 1960s and has progressed with
each decade, much work is still needed to eliminate negative images of Jews
and Judaism. He calls on Christians to recognize God’s covenantal
pluralism. “We should acknowledge that Christianity is valid because it,
like Judaism, fosters covenantal life with God. The same God who formed
Israel into a people by way of a covenant, and who regards this people and
their covenant as irreplaceable, also called into being the Church with its
new form of covenantal life” (189). The purpose of the new covenant was
not to usurp the old but rather to enable Gentiles to establish a
covenantal relationship with God as well. Merkle believes that as
Christians rethink their faith in relation to Judaism, there is much to be
learned from reflecting on some of the central beliefs and practices of
Judaism.

Merkle must be praised for envisaging this collection and for selecting an
impressive group of scholars whose personal, spiritual, and academic quests
can be woven together in a virtually seamless narrative. If his hope was
for readers to learn from and be inspired by these accounts then _Faith
Transformed_ is an enormous success. In fact, its success lies in the
possibility that this slim volume may find readership beyond religion
scholars and, in its way, transform the outdated thinking of a broader
audience.

Matthew Hockenos,
Skidmore Colege,
Saratoga prings, New York