Dear Friends,Today, on my 74th birthday, I have pleasure in sending you the
first issue of Vol. X of our Newsletter to usher in 2004. I am of course
delighted to hear from any of you with any comments you would like to
share. Do contact me at: jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Thought for the month:
“The pursuit of history requires of its practitioners that vital
minimum of ascetic self-discipline that enables a person to do such
things as abandon wishful thinking, assimilate bad news, and discard
pleasing interpretations that cannot passs elementary tests of evidence
and logic. . . .Genuine historical scholarship is painstaking: it builds
detail upon detail, avoiding casual inference and thin deduction. This is
the difference between real history and politically or religiously
motivated propaganda.”

Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) M.F. Coady, biography of Fr. A.Delp
b) ed. G.Besier, Zwischen nationaler Revolution und militarischer Aggression
c) H.Schmidt, Hilde Schneider – biography

2) Journal articles:

a) Herderkorrespondenz 57 (2003) no 8: K-J. Hummel, Catholic research today – continued.
b) D.Goodhew, The rise of C.I.C.C.U.
c) A.Chandler, Quest for historical D.Bonhoeffer

1a) With Bound Hands: A Jesuit in Nazi Germany. The Life and
Selected Prison Letters of Alfred Delp. By Mary Frances Coady.
(Chicago: Loyola Press. 2003. Pp. xv + 239. Paperback $13.95.)

Well known in Germany, where numerous streets and schools bear his
name, the German Jesuit, Alfred Delp, is known in the
English-speaking world chiefly through Thomas Merton’s edition of
Delp’s Prison Meditations, published in 1963, now largely forgotten.
Delp was born in 1907 to an unmarried Catholic mother and a
Protestant father (they married shortly thereafter). He was raised as a
Protestant, receiving Lutheran confirmation in 1921. After a quarrel
with his Lutheran pastor, the headstrong teenager sought refuge with
the local Catholic priest, who prepared Delp for first communion and
confirmation in the Catholic Church. He entered a minor seminary the
year following and, at age eighteen, the Society of Jesus.

Delp’s fierce independence, his overdeveloped critical faculties, and
his indifference to the opinions and feelings of others soon caused
difficulties with peers and superiors. Following ordination to the
priesthood in 1937, Delp received permission from his superiors to
pursue a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Munich. When the
Nazi authorities refused him admission, Delp was assigned to the
editorial staff of the respected Jesuit monthly Stimmen der Zeit. In
April 1941 the Nazis suppressed the journal, and Delp moved to a
suburban parish where, among his other activities, he became “an
address” for Jews fleeing on the underground route to Switzerland.
In 1942 Delp was recruited into the “Kreisau Circle” organized by the
Protestant Count Helmuth von Moltke. This was a group of German
intellectuals who met secretly, mostly at the Moltke estate in East
Prussia, to discuss plans for a “better Germany” following Hitler’s
removal or defeat. Delp was valued for his expertise in the areas of
labor and social justice. This activity was to prove his undoing.
In January 1944 von Moltke was arrested and sent to a concentration
camp. A week after the July 20, 1944, unsuccessful attempt on Hitler’s
life by the Catholic army officer Claus von Stauffenberg, Delp (who
had met with Stauffenberg shortly before but knew nothing of the plot)
was arrested at his parish near Munich. The ostensible reason was his
supposed knowledge of Stauffenberg’s plans. “The actual reason,” Delp
would write from prison following his death sentence, “was that I
happened to be, and chose to remain, a Jesuit.” This was a reference to
the Nazis’ offer to spare his life if he would renounce his Jesuit vows.
Delp was hanged at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin on February 2, 1945.

Coady’s account of Delp’s life is straightforward. It is enriched by
many of the letters he wrote, with manacled hands (hence the book’s
title), during his six months’ imprisonment. These show him
alternating between hope and despair, while clinging always to his
unflinching faith. In addition to his difficulties from the Nazis, Delp
suffered from his Jesuit Provincial’s refusal to permit him to take final
vows. He was considered, Coady writes, “too independent, tending to
act without proper permission,” with “an extravagant manner” which
gave “the impression of unseemly worldliness.” Delp was overjoyed,
therefore, to receive on December 8, 1944, a visit from a Jesuit brother
authorized to receive his final vows in prison.

One of his most poignant prison letters, written January 23, 1945, to the
newborn son of close friends in Munich, contains the spiritual fruit of
his terrible six-month ordeal: “Only in adoration, in love, in living
according to God’s order, is a person free and capable of life.” Before
his walk to the gallows, Delp told the Catholic prison chaplain: “In half
an hour I’ll know more than you do.”

His Jesuit confreres would remember him, Coady writes, “as an enfant
terrible: a maverick, and at times a Jesuit superior’s headache.” Their
concise and fitting epitaph: “He lived as a sinner and died as a martyr.”
John Jay Hughes, St. Louis.

1b) Zwischen “nationaler Revolution” und militärischer Aggression.
Transformationen in Kirche und Gesellschaft 1934-1939.
Edited by Gerhard Besier. ‘Schriften des Historischen Kollegs.
Kolloquien 48′. Munich: R.Oldenbourg Verlag. 2001.
xvii + 276 pp. ISBN 3-486-56543-5

(This review appeared in German History, Vol 21, no 3)
The prestigious Historisches Kolleg in Munich every year
invites its Research Fellows to organize a Colloquium around the
subject of their researches. So in 1998 Professor Gerhard Besier
(Heidelberg) brought together a distinguished group of international
colleagues to share their investigations on the topic of the initial stages
of the German Church Struggle between Hitler’s coming to power and
the outbreak of the second world war. These Colloquium papers are
now reprinted in full. In the meantime Besier’s own comprehensive
narrative of the years 1934-37, which is the sequel to two earlier
volumes written by the late Professor Klaus Scholder, has been
published under the title Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich. Spaltungen
und Abwehrkämpfe 1934-1937 (Berlin: Proplyläen Verlag, 2001).
Together these volumes provide us with a valuable guide to the
present state of research. Particularly helpful are those contributions
which place the German Church Struggle in the wider international
context, a perspective not hitherto treated systematically.

Over the past fifty years, the historiography of the German
Church Struggle has gone through various phases. The initial defensive
and apologetic accounts sought to portray heroically the Churches’
reactions to Nazi persecution, culminating in the outspoken resistance
of a Bishop Galen or the martyrdom of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But the
second phase was much more critical, pointing to the widespread
accommodation of the church authorities, or even support for the
Nazis’ extremist ideological goals. Now a more balanced and nuanced
approach is evident, which has the added value of adopting a
comparative dimension whereby the Nazi harassment of and the
developments within the churches are not seen in isolation. Thomas
Fandel’s study of the local area of the Palatinate, showing how both
Catholic and Protestant priests fared, is an excellent example of this
trend. Hans Mommsen and Julius Schoeps contribute thoughtful essays
on Nazism as a secular or political religion, and attribute much of its
success amongst church members to its skillful propaganda techniques
using religious vocabulary for nationalistic and racist goals.

Klaus-Michael Mallmann’s detailed analysis of the Gestapo and secret
police intelligence services , and their policies towards the churches,
confirms the picture, both of intense competency conflicts within the
Nazi hierarchy, as well as of the escalating radicalization of Nazi
policy. The resulting inconsistencies, when for instance Pastor Martin
Niemöller was sent to a concentration camp, but Bishop Galen
remained free, only added to the confused picture of the German
Church Struggle prevailing abroad.

Both Andrew Chandler on British Church attitudes towards
Nazism and Ingun Montgomery on the Swedish reactions point out the
many conflicting and ambivalent stands, affecting church members in
these countries, even those most closely involved, like Bishop George
Bell of Chichester. Sympathy for fellow Protestants, outrage at Nazi
violence, belated but insufficient assistance to the Nazis’ victims, and
fervent longings to do all they could to prevent another war,
characterized these responses between appeasement and condemnation.
So too in North America, the initial pacifist and pro-German mood of
the early 1930s was eventually replaced by a reluctant awareness of
Nazi intolerance and racial persecution. This ‘metanoia’ did much to
justify the post-1939 readiness to take up arms again in order to combat
the evils of Nazi domination. So too the essays describing the
churches’ reactions in France, Austria and Czechoslovakia add
valuable new material to the wider picture.

But as Gerhard Besier pertinently points out, the crucial factors
were the German churches’ own willingness to accommodate the Nazi
regime and to applaud its amazing successes between the so-called
‘National Revolution’ of 1933 and the outbreak of deliberate military
aggression in 1939. The German church leaders’ nationalist
sympathies and their desire to retain their positions as members of the
establishment prevented them from facing the realities of the Nazi
ambitions. For these reasons no coherent or compelling Christian
resistance to Nazism was ever developed. The central issue of how
Christian churches can deal with totalitarian regimes still remains
unresolved. But this volume gives us an excellent case study of the
problems and issues involved. The German Church Struggle was
indeed exemplary of the churches’ dilemmas in many societies during
the twentieth century. We can confidently say, however, that no
comparable situation has been so fully or comprehensively researched
as Germany’s. This volume adds yet again to the large corpus of
historiography on this topic, bringing with it significant findings from
new points of view.
JSC

1c) Hartmut Schmidt, Zwischen Riga und Locarno. Bericht über Hilde
Schneider, Christin jüdischer Herkunft, Diakonisse, Ghetto- und KZ
Häftling, Gefängnispfarrerin. Berlin: Wichern Verlag 2001. 298 pp.
ISBN 3-88981-127-2

There has recently been a surge of interest in the German
Evangelical Church about the careers of those pioneer women who, in
the course of the last century, resolutely sought to obtain the
qualifications and status of professional clergy. For decades their
progress was blocked by the male-dominated ecclesiastical
bureaucracies. Only in the last few years have women gained senior
positions in the various provincial churches.

This process, of course also happened in other countries. But in
Germany, the period of Nazi rule had a particularly deleterious impact.
The Nazi Party was well known for its antipathy to professional
women. But, even more fatefully, the Nazi supporters in the
Evangelical Church, known as the ‘German Christians’, pursued their
own vision of anti-feminism by propagating their ideas of a ‘manly’
church devoted to national and military goals, in which women’s roles
were clearly subordinate. No less traumatic was the fate of the small
number of Christians converted from Judaism, who were often
abandoned by their fellow Christians to the full horrors of Nazi
persecution.

Such was the situation of Hilde Schneider, who is apparently
now in her late ‘eighties, and whose remarkable reminiscences have
been ably written and researched by Hartmut Schmidt, a senior member
of the Evangelical Church’s press service. His achievement is to bring
to our attention the story of this lengthy and often painful odyssey by a
bravely courageous but self-effacing woman in her struggle to become
a pastor for the sake of the neediest of her sisters.

Although both her parents had much earlier been converted and
joined the Evangelical Church, Hilde was treated by the Nazis as
“fully” Jewish. Her early upbringing and her training as a nursing
sister in the largest Evangelical Church hospital in Hannover counted
for nothing. After the November 1938 pogrom, all the hospital director
could do was to advise her to emigrate as quickly as possible. The lack
of sympathy for her plight even amongst the sisterhood was notable.
The outbreak of war, however, put an end to her hopes for
escape. When the Nazi net closed tighter in 1941, Hilde was deported,
along with 1000 Jews from Hannover, to the specially created ghetto
for German Jews in the slums of Riga. Only 40 were to survive.
Hartmut Schmidt’s reconstruction of the cruelties and sadism of the
oppressors, as of the humiliations, degradations and sufferings of the
ghetto’s inmates, is both painful and shocking, even though soberly
recalled. He has skilfully and convincingly interwoven Hilde’s own
memories of this appalling experience with surviving documents of the
Riga and Latvian Holocaust.

Hilde’s survival was only accidental. But throughout she was
able to keep her Bible, from which she drew consolation, especially
from the psalms. For years afterwards, however, her health remained
damaged.

In 1945 she finally got back to Hannover, resolved that she must
put her personal sufferings at the service of others, by becoming a
pastor for women prisoners. Hartmut Schmidt notes very clearly the
obstacles she and other women would-be pastors faced at that time. It
took her years to get the necessary training and experience, very often
over the dismissive attitudes of church officials. Finally in 1959 she
obtained the post she most desired in the women’s prison in Frankfurt
and served fourteeen years until her retirement. Her sincere dedication
to Christ, her instinctive sympathy for women in trouble and her
readiness to stand by them in their suffering, are here well described.
The title of the book comes from the depth of her own
sufferings in Riga to the joyous openness she shared in Locarno at an
ecumenical guesthouse, supported by the World Council of Churches.
But only at the end of her career has she found a diligent and
supportive biographer and has been able to overcome the barrier of
silence imposed after the war by the reluctance of so many Germans to
acknowledge what crimes were committed in their name. Hilde
Schneider’s witness throughout is both instructive and inspiring, and
we must be grateful to Hartmut Schmidt for his enlightening
commentary.
JSC

2a) The German Catholic Church’s researches: Nazi dictatorship and
the Second World War – Part II, translated by Olav Zachau

The debate over the Catholics’ relationship to the Jews during the Third
Reich is closely linked to the controversy over Pope Pius XII. The
shining picture of this pope’s conduct during the Third Reich painted by
Christians and Jews alike was turned completely upside down by
Hochhuth in 1963. On the stage, Pius XII turned into a Nazi
collaborator. The two positions could not have been more
contradictory, and both views continue to find supporters.

The scope of judgements ranges from “Hitler’s Pope” (John Cornwell,
1999) to “Il Papa degli Ebrei” (“The Pope of the Jews”, Andrea
Tornielli, 2001). The discussion seemed to have bogged down into a
ritualized exchange of the same tired arguments. The examination of
the role of the Vatican in the Second World War has increasingly
narrowed to the relationship between the church and the Jews and in
turn, turned this debate into a stalemate.

New insights may be gained by expanding the perspective beyond the
personality of Pope Pius XII through international comparisons. This
means looking at the conduct of the Church and its representatives at
all levels of the hierarchy as well as reconsidering the standard of
values according to which the Pope should be measured. Was he, above
all, the protector of the Catholics all over the world? Was he a diplomat
acting on the same level as the governments of other states or was he
even the personified conscience of this world? The answer to these
questions and the question of how Pius’ positioned himself within this
spectrum will produce quite different judgements and interpretations.
The answer to these questions, however, can only be found by way of
interdisciplinary and international cooperation. It is, first and foremost,
absolutely essential to work with church historians who have the
necessary theological knowledge to understand these internal debates.

It is equally necessary to broaden the perspective towards a
international, or at least a European, perspective, which is only possible
by working with historians from abroad.

The question of the perspectives and weak spots of the research on
Catholicism 1933-1945 leads directly to the question of the sources
available and the overall conditions in the archives.

Since February 2003 new archival material from the Vatican has
opened far reaching new possibilities, and large scale work on them has
already begun. Files from the Vatican’s State secretary, the nunciatures
of Munich and Berlin, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith are now available for the years until 1939 and allow new insights
into the much debated relationship between the Catholic church and
Nazi Germany. The papers of Cardinal Faulhaber, which have been
prepared to an exemplary standard, were made available in Munich a
year ago, and in Rome the analysis of the influential and controversial
Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal has begun. Even if this work will not
revolutionize previous results, new source material may
yield findings that will further clarify the internal process of decision
making, the working process and internal connections; older
conclusions will be confirmed or explained in more detail. Surprises,
however, cannot be ruled out, by any means. Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo,
for instance, always seemed to be a weak figure, who was not recalled
apparently only because that the Vatican was afraid it would not be
allowed to appoint a successor. In the nunciature’s reports, he appears
as a reflective, clear-sighted analyst with surprisingly sound political
judgement.

The files from the reign of Pius XII (1939-1958), however, are still
unavailable. The newly available files only tell us about Eugenio
Pacelli, who was to become Pius XII, as nuncio in Munich and Berlin,
and as State Secretary. A further opening of the archives, propably in
2006, is not only desirable from a scholarly point of view, but also
regarding the transparancy in dealing with the history of the church.
The public still thinks that those who hide something have reasons for
doing so.

Even a full opening of all archives will not be able to silence
conscious ignorance and prejudice. Critics will still bring forward the
accusation that the files have been previously purged, which could
hardly be disproved. Still, science must do its duty and make it possible
that all who want to know better can know better.

The wish for free access to more archival material is a legitimate one.
However, the research deficits until now are not only due to the
problematic situation in the Vatican archives. First, materials on the
Catholic church are to be found not only in the Vatican. Numerous
American, European and Israeli archives contain materials that could
shed light on the role of the Pope during the Second World War and the
Holocaust from several perspectives. In particular, archives in East and
Southeast Europe have not been used to the fullest extent.

Since the 1960s, there had been an important exception concerning
the Vatican’s documents for the period of the Second World War. Pope
Paul VI. authorized the publication of the momentous, because
unprecedented, 11 volumes of the edition “Actes et documents du Saint
Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre mondiale”. The first appeared in
1965. This series contains a representative selection of documents from
the time of the Second World War, as edited by four Jesuit priests who
had been given access to the files. These volumes have now
been supplemented by the comprehensive editions of other
documentary sources that have been published by the Commission for
Contemporary History in Germany since the 1960s.

The abundance of information on various aspects of Catholic life in
Germany and the relationship of the German bishops to the Vatican
seems, however, to have had a rather intimidating than encouraging
effect. Apart from sheer volume of the material, language barriers have
until now prevented these materials from being better received. Large
parts of the “Actes et documents” are in Italian ( the working language
of the Curia), as well as numerous documents in English, French, and
Latin, and therefore present difficulties to scholars who only function
in German.

Language barriers have also been the main obstacle for greater
international cooperation in research on Catholicism. Many recent
publications, especially on the American market, have ignored the
German literature and present results as new that have been available in
German for some years. On the other hand, even German standard
works have not been translated into English. The paradoxical result,
e.g. in the case of the controversy over the treaty between the German
Reich and the Vatican (Reichskonkordat) (Scholder/Repgen) is that
American scholars draw a different conclusion than the Germans, in
part because Klaus Scholder’s contributions were translated into
English, while those of Konrad Repgen’s were not. It is imperative to
fill this deficit.

Since the summer of 2000, having been provoked by Klaus Bednarz’s
research on the use of forced labour in Catholic institutions during the
Third Reich, which left much to be desired, scholars in all German
dioceses have begun delving into this history of forced labour for the
church at the request of the German Bishops’ Conference (Deutsche
Bischofskonferenz). And they have discovered a number of other
unresolved questions relating to the history of the two major Christian
churches during the war. One of these questions involves the use of
church facilities by the Nazi state; this question is directly connected to
the problem of moral judgement and reparations payments to the
victims. Research into the history of the Churches during the second
half of “these twelve years” has begun and will be a focus not only of
future research on Catholicism but also of studies that cut across
denominational boundaries.

The debate on forced labour, for which scholars of German
Catholicism were so unprepared, makes clear that they will not only
have the task of carrying out their long-term research on church history,
but also of dealing with more immediate and pressing issues that will
arise. They have to ask themselves whether more “time bombs” are
ticking like the forced labour question, how they could disarm them in
advance, and they have to develop strategies of communicating to the
public and of limiting the damages, in case one of these bombs does
explode.
K-J.Hummel, Bonn

b) D. Goodhew, The Rise of the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian
Union, 1910-71 in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 54, no 1,
Jan. 2003, pp.62ff. Fifty years ago when I was a student in

Cambridge, the religious scene was preoccupied by the rivalry between
the Student Christian Movement and the C.I.C.C.U. The former was
liberal, ecumenical and open to new ideas; the latter was conservative,
evangelical and rigorous in its doctrinaire stance. The competition for
the souls and minds of the undergraduates was intense, and is now
brought to life in this excellently researched article by David Goodhew.
He rightly makes the point that C.I.C.C.U.’s strength was its adherence
to a fixed evangelical line, which could be traced back to the Clapham
Sect, Wilberforce, and Rev. Charles Simeon. In the post-1945 period
they had the advantage of attracting a host of excellent speakers, such
as John Stott, and held missions led by Billy Graham. They were far
better organised than other student societies, and so had a greater
impact, as they still do.

c) A Chandler, A quest for the historical Dietrich Bonhoeffer in
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 54, no 1, January 2003, p.89-96.

This sprightly account of the present state of the Bonhoeffer legacy
shows that very solid memorials of this young German theologian now
exist. On the one hand, his statue is placed on the portal of Westminster
Abbey in London, as one of the 20th century martyrs; on the other
hand, the publication of his Werke is now complete in seventeen
volumes, luckily finished shortly before the death of his most noted
champion, Eberhard Bethge. (The English translation, which has now
seven volumes in print, continues, and will presumably eventually be
complete.) Chandler rightly points out that Bonhoeffer’s appeal was
in part due to his provocative remarks in the paper-back edition of
Letters and Papers from Prison, and in part from the fact that he was
murdered by the Nazis at the very end of the war. He also shows that
some exaggerated claims made about his role in the Church Struggle or
the German Resistance Movement need to be modified, but that
shouldn’t distract from the important insights he gave us, especially in
the field of ethics.

With all my good wishes for the start of the New Year. I trust you all
had a blessed Christmas holiday.

John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,
“I have often times and many ways looked into the state of
earthly kingdoms, generally the whole world over (as fare as it may yet
be knowen to Christian men commonly) being a studie of no great
difficultie, but rather a purpose somewhat answerable to a perfect
Cosmographer, to find himself Cosmolities, a citizen and member of
the whole and only one mysticall citie universall, and so consequently
to meditate on the Cosmopoliticall government thereof, under the King
almightie.”
Edgar, King of the Saxons. circa A.D. 973

With this issue, we come to the completion of Volume IX. I had no
idea when I began this venture that it would be feasible to continue for
so long. The only reason for doing so has been the encouragement
which you, the readers, have given me to do so. My thanks to all of
you in so many different parts of the world. May I once again repeat
my invitation to send me any comments, criticisms or suggestions – or
better still offers to review books for our list members. I very much
hope in 2004 to hear from many of you via my personal e-mail address
= jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Please remember NOT to use the above kirzeit-l return address

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) ed.D. Dietrich, Christian responses to the Holocaust
b) ed. K. Koschorke, Transcontinental Links

2) Journal articles:

a) Herder Korrespondenz, 57 (2003) no. 8, Hummel, Catholic research today (1st part)
b) Ben-Sasson, Warsaw Ghetto

List of books reviewed in 2003
1a) ed. Donald Dietrich, Christian responses to the Holocaust. Moral
and Ethical issues. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.
2003. 217pp.

These collected papers from a Boston College conference,
written by both Jewish and Christian scholars, have been fluently
edited by Donald Dietrich. They provide a more balanced and nuanced
picture than the similar collection on this topic Betrayal, edited by
S. Heschel and R. Ericksen. The introductory essay describes the
unprecedented challenges to the churches posed by the Nazi totalitarian
regime, seductively flying the national flag, but equally determined to
suppress all opposition. There follows a series of case studies, outlining
the range of churchmen’s responses to the Nazi onslaught, including
the persecution of the Jews. These varied from willing accommodation
to Hitler’s charisma on the part of idealistic priests, indulging their
wishful thinking about restoring a godly autocracy in Germany, to
eventual outright resistance by the more pugnacious defenders of the
churches’ autonomy.

We are given valuable biographical sketches of some
lesser-known figures, showing how these men and women maneuvered
between loyalty to the nation and the churches’ ethical positions. They
draw attention to the fact that a crucial factor in the churches’ response
to the Holocaust (or lack of it) can be found in the absence of personal
contacts, let alone theological encounters, with Jews in the pre-Nazi
period.

Most thoughtful is Stephen Haynes’ analysis of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer’s attitude towards Judaism. He argues that the Nazis’
maltreatment of the Jews, particularly the Crystal Night pogrom, and
the absence of any collective church protest, was one of the main
influences for Bonhoeffer’s decision to join the covert political
resistance. On the other hand, Bonhoeffer’s eventual martyrdom
should not cover up the fact that his earlier theological opinion in 1933
followed Luther’s traditional anti-Judaic stance, which Haynes
characterizes as “Bonhoeffer’s brief role as theological bystander and
unwitting collaborator with Nazi Judenhass”. (This essay should be
compared with the evaluation given by Klemens von Klemperer in his
recent book, German Incertitudes, 1914-1945.)

Most moving is the Jewish scholar Lawrence Baron’s tribute to
the often neglected Dutch evangelist Corrie ten Boom, whose sympathy
for the Jews led to her arrest and incarceration in Ravensbrück, but
who could nevertheless find the faith to forgive her captors. Her
benevolent and continuing mission to share the love of Jesus with her
Jewish friends was a demonstration that Christian supersessionism
need not lead to antisemitism.

In 1945, the surviving German Protestant leaders issued a
number of statements to explain – and justify – their behaviour in the
previous twelve years. Matthew Hockenos’ critical analysis shows how
the conservatives tried to claim that the church had successfully
resisted the Nazi encroachments on church autonomy. At the same time
they rejected all ideas of German collective guilt, attributed Nazi
successes to the demonic forces of secularism and totalitarianism, and
appealed for sympathy from other Christians abroad. But their more
radical critics, following Karl Barth, rightly pointed to the defects of
such apologias. More far-reaching changes in the structures, as well as
the theology, of these churches were needed. Such changes were,
however, never made, and it was decades before German
Evangelicalism fully accepted the task of coming to terms with its past.
The final stimulating chapter by Fr. John Pawlikowski calls for
the development of a new moral sensitivity through symbolic
communication in sacred ritual. What kind of liturgies can evoke
constructive moral commitment, while being fully conscious of
humanity’s destructive capacities as in the Holocaust? We need new
symbols of transcendence, acknowledging our dependence on a creator
God while clearly asserting our newly realized co-creational
responsibilities. This is a task in which both Christians and Jews should
unite.
JSC

1b) ed. Klaus Koschorke, Transcontinental Links in the History of
Non-Western Christianity/Transkontinentale Beziehungen in der
Geschichte des aussereuropäischen Christentum. Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz Verlag 2002. 344pp

As is well known, the historiography of Christian missions has
undergone striking changes in recent decades. The earlier
concentration on the careers of European and North American
missionaries, or on the strategies of their respective sending boards, has
now been largely superseded by a concern to describe the missionized
peoples of the non-western world and the inculturation of the Christian
faith among the indigenous populations. But recently a group of church
historians in Munich held a conference to explore the resultant
transcontinental links forged between the different branches of these
indigenous churches in widely separated parts of the world. These
interactions, often developed independently of missionary connections,
reveal a network of polycentric patterns hitherto unknown or
underplayed. The conference papers thus provide a new and enriching
dimension to our understanding of how non-western Christianity
developed and cross-fertilized itself around the globe.

The first group of papers discusses how ethnic diasporas
worked as networks for the dissemination of Christianity. The best
known example is the enforced transfer of Africans to America in the
slave trade. What is not well known is that many of these slaves were
already Christian and took their African version with them. Equally
significant was the reverse process at the end of the eighteenth century,
when first Sierra Leone, and later Liberia, saw the transfer of
Christianity back to Africa with the returning freed slaves. To these
families, Africa became the biblically-promised land, especially in the
ranks of the evangelical revivalists. The resulting founding of a large
number of independent African churches, and their consequent success,
has largely contributed to making Africa now one of the citadels of
modern Christianity.

In the same way, the expansion of the Korean churches through
the diaspora of Korean migrants in Hawaii, California, Mexico, Siberia
and China, has been largely unrecorded, and is here explored in outline.
So too, the transfer of Indian Christianity to South Africa, Fiji,
Tanzania, Trinidad, Mauritius and Uganda, as a result of indentured
labour schemes, is an interesting story, which brings out the dilemmas
and opportunities of such long-distance transfers. No less significant is
the impact of the revival of indigenous Christian communities which
existed before the white missionaries arrived, such as the Ethiopian
Church or the Thomas Church in India. These are now often celebrated
as having made a truly indigenous contribution to their respective
anti-colonialist and nationalist movements, and their examples are
often admired across the continents.

This kind of comparative history seeks to do more than merely
add to the total range of third world studies, by providing a church
history of Botswana, Bolivia or Bali. Rather it tries to understand how
the planting and expansion of Christian churches in the non-western
world took place with all the features of adaptation, acculturation and
indigenization through these various transcontinental linkages. This is a
bold and highly interesting experiment, which breaks new ground.
Most of the papers are in English, and the German ones have an
English summary. They all have ample footnotes, but alas! there is no
index.

One of the problems involved in such analyses is that of
definitions. Was the Christianity first planted in the Congo at the end of
the 15th century, then transplanted to America in the 16th and 17th,
and returned to Africa in the 19th, recognizably the same? Or has the
transmutation and adaptation of such linkages only produced new
entities as the result of syncretisms which may or may not be genuinely
Christian? Or is the term Christianity to be defined so inclusively that
even rastafarianism, as the West Indian offshoot of an African
Christianity, should be acknowledged? And what about the perennial
thorny issue of polygamy, as a legitimate form of Christian family life?

But equally remarkable are the similarities and continuities
carried across the oceans from one indigenous society to another. In
many of the diaspora communities, traditional homeland Christianity
served to reinforce and revalidate their sense of ethnic and religious
identity, as well as to develop “survival strategies” in their new
surroundings. At the same time, Christianity’s messianic message
frequently became the focus for the political aspirations of numerous
diaspora communities in exploited circumstances, such as the Indians
in South Africa or the Koreans in Hawaii or California. Such
movements were largely self-generating and often opposed by local
(white) Christian leaders. But in turn these churches provided the
impetus for reform in the homeland, as is shown in the career of
Syngman Rhee, the guiding light of his church in exile in America for
many years, then leader of the struggle against Japanese imperialism,
and later President of a liberated Korea.

The chapter by the editor, Klaus Koschorke, on the Edinburgh
World Missionary Conference of 1910, makes clear the paradox
involved here. Christianity is a missionary religion, universal in scope,
and successful in overcoming the limits of geography, race and class.
Nevertheless, its very success in the Third World stimulated local
movements revolting against the paternalism and control of the
European missionaries, and in turn having a wider political impact
against colonial rule altogether. Edinburgh marked the
acknowledgment of the just demands of the “younger churches”, even
though they were scarcely represented. The next conference in 1938
was, by contrast, overwhelmingly non-western in character. While
grateful for their origins, these younger churches were determined now
to control their own destinies. And in the years after 1945, they
increasingly did so. Institutions such as the International Missionary
Council or the World Council of Churches were to become dominated
by non-western Christians, liberated from the constraints of European
denominationalism, and often interacting with each other in
constructive ways. The ideal of self-governing, self-supporting and
self-propagating churches, whether in mid-19th century Africa or
mid-20th century China, did not advocate isolation but rather global
collaboration on the basis of equality. This is how the Christian
missionary commitment is being best understood at the beginning of
the 21st century.

The evidence provided in these essays of the variety of
non-western Christian experience shows the need for fuller treatments
of these as-yet-unexplored case studies. It is to be hoped that younger
scholars from Asia, Africa and Latin America will follow up these
leads. In particular, the wide-ranging issues of inculturation and
indigenization, the liberation from European models, the development
of international connections, and the opportunities of both
denominational and inter-faith ecumenism, should surely take a high
priority. The examples offered in this volume deserve close study, and
if possible replication and addition in the future. The multicultural
polycentric Christian Gospel is now being propagated in a vast plurality
of cultures, languages and competing ideologies. Church historians
have a gigantic task ahead of them to keep abreast and to record what
is currently taking place within the whole Christian community.
JSC

2) Journal articles:

a) Herderkorrespondenz 57 (2003), no. 8 K-J.Hummel, Facts –
Interpretations – Questions: Where is research in Catholicism heading?
(This translated article has kindly been made available to us by the
Catholic Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, Bonn. The text and the
German original can be found under
http://www.kfzg.de/Aktuelles/aktuelles.html.

We reprint two extracts, one this month, and one in the next issue)
German research on Catholicism at the moment finds itself in
an exciting, but partly unclear, phase of transition, characterized by
strongly differing demands from scholarship, the politicized world of
the historical profession (Geschichtspolitik) and the media. A recent
conference organized by the Commission for Contemporary History
(Kommission für Zeitgeschichte) and the Catholic Academy in Bavaria
(Katholische Akademie in Bayern) offered the opportunity to take stock
critically and discuss important new perspectives.

Hans Günter Hockerts’ formulation of the scholarly basis was
unambiguous and unchallenged, but was nonetheless surprising for
some people: “Religion is relevant.” 20 years ago sceptics were still
dominating the scene. The godfathers of social history
(Gesellschaftsgeschichte) such as Hans Ulrich Wehler, who were
following Max Weber in being “religiously unmusical” (“religiös
unmusikalisch”), confirmed each other in the misconception that since
the Enlightenment, religion had become increasingly irrelevant in
society, and could be suitably acknowledged in ironic half sentences. It
was the generation of their disciples, however, who re-discovered
religion as a central “focus of socialization” (“Vergesellschaftungskern”).

They were especially interested in the
Catholic milieu that provided essential structural shaping at any rate for
about one third of German society from the middle of the 19th century
to the Second Vatican Council. Modern cultural history approached
religion by way of the key categories of “meaning” (“Sinn”) and
“design” (“Bedeutung”). “Religion is a prototypical product of
meaning and design. That goes for religious norms and doctrines in the
sense of central systems of interpretation as well as for individual
religiousness, i.e. the dimension of experiencing meaning and design.”

This situation could lead to a productive interdisciplinary co-operation
in modern research on Catholicism. In Germany, however, in contrast
to France, for example, this will only be likely on a limited scale.
While some secular disciplines have begun to undertake research on
Catholicism, the church historians of the Catholic and Protestant
faculties have seemed to turn to other fields of studies and ignore
contemporary religious history.

There is, moreover, a dilemma which poses great difficulties for the
historical profession. This is caused by the appearance of a number of
highly politicized and polemical interpretations of recent history,
including church history. For example, we can cite John Cornwell’s
“Hitler’s Pope”, or Daniel J. Goldhagen’s accusatory work “A Moral
reckoning. The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its
Unfulfilled Duty of Repair”. Whereas German scholarly research on
Catholicism can pride itself upon a wealth of detailed studies and
overviews, the deplorable fact remains that success increasingly
depends upon viewing and sales figures rather than the quality of the
scholarship and of the scholarly conclusions. Goldhagen’s book has
been unanimously condemned as not being up to scholarly standards,
and Cornwell’s dismissed as a journalistic work. But the public
generously overlooked the unusual quantity of mistakes of Cornwell’s
and Goldhagen’s works. In all likelihood, this leniency will persist as
long as the authors, who confidently undercut existing scholarly
standards, continue to write what the public wants to read.
For researchers in contemporary history, this new trend spells an
unusual challenge. If the public’s ideas about history are more
dependent on a fictional text than on the results of decades of
meticulous scholarly research, the historical profession obviously has a
problem in communicating its findings to a larger audience which no
amount of scolding the media will solve. It must find a way to
popularize its findings in a society dominated by the mass media, while
not falsifying complex matters because of the need to simplify. Only in
rare cases are scholars up to this challenge of reducing complicated
results to the size of a soundbite.

The 40-year old history of Hochhuth’s “The Deputy” (“Der
Stellvertreter”) is a perfect example of the fruitless efforts of scholars
to regain the initiative in formulating an effective answer to moral
charges through scholarly editions and learned treatises. The
discussions about forced labour in Catholic institutions during the Nazi
period, or about Catholic alleged involvement with the notorious East
German secret police – the “Stasi” – are but the latest examples of this.
Historians of Catholicism have taken up the gauntlet, because there is
no alternative. Contemporary history is inevitably conflict-ridden
history.

Today, interpreters are needed to make the findings of research
accessible to a wider public. Historical awareness is not even primarily
being shaped by historians, but rather by the manifold manifestations of
“infotainment”. If scholars are to measure their results against the
public’s widely held historical notions and to correct them, if
necessary, they must co-operate with the media that have direct access
to the public and can convey those corrections.

It is not only scholars who should influence the media, however; the
media can also give new momentum to knowledge and scholarly
investigation. During the debate on reparations for forced labour
imported from abroad by the Nazis to work in war-time industries, for
instance, the TV magazine “Monitor” on 20th July 2000, suddenly
charged the Catholic church with having profited from this forced
labour as well. Prior to this broadcast, the issue of forced labour
working for the church had not been dealt with by either Catholic
researchers or other historians who had been working on foreign
labour. Therefore the accusations caught Catholic researchers totally
off guard and made it obvious that, in spite of an abundance of
scholarly literature, the question of how the Church and Catholics fared
in the Third Reich had not yet been fully researched.

The question of the relationship between political Catholicism in
Germany and modern democracy (with the example of the Center Party
1930-1933) was the immediate cause for the foundation, in the early
1960s, of the “Commission for Contemporary History at the Catholic
Academy in Bavaria” (“Kommission für Zeitgeschichte bei der
Katholischen Akademie in Bayern”). Hochhuth’s provocative play
occurred subsequently. The initiators were the director of the academy,
later Secretary to the Conference of the German Bishops, Prälat Karl
Forster, and two young historians, 35 year old Rudolf Morsey and 40
year old Konrad Repgen. The Munich conference of 2003 was held in
honour of these two distinguished scholars. It was, however, more than
a satisfying retrospective on an impressive life’s work. It served as a
forum to consider the challenges posed by both the politicized
historical profession and the media, to assess the results and omissions
of current research and, finally, to point the way to future topics and
fields of research.
(to be continued).
Karl-Josef Hummel is Director of the Research Department of the
Kommission fur Zeitgeschichte.

b) Yad Vashem Studies, 31, 2003.

Havi Ben-Sasson contributes a remarkable article to this latest volume
of the Yad Vashem Studies on “Christians in the Ghetto: All Saints and
the Holy Virgin Mary Churches, and the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto”.
This describes the fate of the group of Christian Jews who were
incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto after the Nazi conquest of Poland.
The author makes clear that this small minority of Christians in a larger
minority of Jews were doubly discriminated against. Many of them
had left the Jewish community earlier, were relatively wealthy, and
looked to the Catholic Church to give them support. Interestingly, two
Catholic parishes functioned during the period before the ghetto
inhabitants, both Christian and Jewish, were deported. Unfortunately
relations between the two groups were strained, with faults on both
sides. Despite the paucity of surviving sources, this essay shed light on
this dark chapter of recent Polish church history.
JSC

May I send you all my very best wishes for the Christmas season, and
wish you every success in your endeavours during 2004.
John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

In Thanksgiving for our Blessings at this Christmas tide
Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine,
et tu das illis escam in tempore opportuno:
aperis manum tuam et imples omne animal benedictione.
Et mihi sitienti et mihi esurienti deese poteris?
Venite sitientes, venite esurientes,
comedite panem meum et bibite vinum
quod miserim vobis.
O nos felices filii, O nos beati,
qui ad mensam patris coelestis
tam amanter invitamur.
Ibi panis angelorum copiose fangitur
Ibi vinum electorum copiose bibitur
O nos felices, O nos beati.

List of books reviewed in 2003:

• Alvarez, David, Espionage in the Vatican July
• Breward, Ian, A history of the churches in Australasia August
• Brouwer, Ruth, Modern women modernizing men September
• Brown Callum, The death of Christian Britain July
  Dam, Harmjan, Der Weltbund für Freundschaftsarbeit der Kirchen
  November
• Denzler, Georg, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort:
  Katholische Priester, Bischöfe und Theologen im
  Dritten Reich September
• Dietrich, Donald ed., Christian responses to the Holocaust December
• Emilsen S. & W., Mapping the Landscape: Essays on Australian and
  New Zealand Christianity August
• Feldkamp, Michael, Goldhagens unwillige Kirche August
• Gallo, Patrick, For Love and Country. The Italian Resistance October
• Goldhagen, Daniel A moral reckoning. The role of the Catholic
  Church in the Holocaust and the unfulfilled duty of repair March
• Griech-Pollele, Beth, Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and
  National Socialism February
• Hesse, Hans ed., Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s Witnesses
  during the Nazi regime October
• Jenkins, Julian, Christian Pacifism confronts German nationalism
  November
• Kirby, Dianne ed, Religion and the Cold War September
• Koschorke, K, Transcontinental Links December
• Kreutzer, Heike, Das Reichskirchenministerium im Gefüge
  der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft July
• McNally, Vincent, The Lord’s Distant Vinyard: The Oblates
  in British Columbia January
• Moltman-Wendel, Elisabeth, Autobiography January
• Perica, Vjekoslav, Balkan Idols. Religion, nationalism and
  the Yugoslav states October
• Rutherdale, Myra, Women and the White Man’s God: Gender,
  race in the Canadian mission field August
• Steigmann-Gall, Richard, The Holy Reich September
• Voigt, Klaus, Villa Emma: jüdische Kinder auf der Flucht February
• Wood, David, Poet, priest and prophet -Bishop J.V.Taylor March
• Woolner, D and Kurial, R, FDR, the Vatican and the Roman
  Catholic Church in America, 1933-1945 October

Dear Friends,

November is the time when German Protestants hold their
annual services of Prayer and Repentance, coinciding with the 65th
anniversary of the notorious Crystal Night pogrom, as well as the
85th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Herewith an
appropriate comment by the Jewish poet Gerty Spies:

“Was ist des Unschuldigen Schuld –
Wo beginnt sie?
wo er gelassen, mit hängenden Armen,
schulterzuckend daneben steht,
den Mantel zuknöpft,
die Zigarette anzündet
und spricht:
Da kann man nichts machen . . .
Seht, da beginnt des Unschuldigen Schuld

Translation for North Americans: “NIMBY” – or – “I couldn’t care
less”.

Contents:

1) International Bonhoeffer Congress
2) Christian Pacifism: a review article

1) The IX International Bonhoeffer Congress will be held on June
6-11, 2004, at the Casa La Salle (Christian Brothers’ Conference
Centre) on the Via Aurelia, Rome, Italy. Organized by the English
Language Section of the International Bonhoeffer Society, the
conference theme is: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Christian
Humanism”. A website has been created for further information,
registration and contact persons:
www.bonhoeffercongress.org

Conference sub-themes include: “Christianity and Humanism, past
and present”, “Bonhoeffer, Catholicism and Catholic Humanism”,
“Ethics, Responsibility and Christian Humanism”, and “Judaism and
Humanism”. The conference will be structrured around plenary
sessions, seminars and special events in Rome. For immediate
information contact one of the conference co-chairs, Dr Michael
Lukens at michael.lukens@snc.edu or Rev. John Matthews at
jwmatt@aol.com

2) Christian Pacifism in the early twentieth century

a) Julian Jenkins, Christian Pacifism confronts German Nationalism
– The Ecumenical Movement and the Cause of Peace in Germany,
1914-1933. Lewiston, N.Y./Kingston, Ont./Lampeter: Edwin Mellen
Press 2002. 494 pp ISBN 0-7734-7137-5

b) Harmjan Dam, Der Weltbund für Freundschaftsarbeit der
Kirchen, 1914-1948. Eine ökumenische Friedensorganisation.
Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Otto Lembeck. 476 pp. ISBN
3-87476-379-X

Throughout the twentieth century, Christian pacifism was a
lost cause. During all the years from the British conquest of the
Boers in South Africa to the American onslaught against
Afghanistan or Iraq, the religious establishments of the major
western churches approved the use of military force as a means of
settling international disputes, encouraged their members to take up
arms, and even supported the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Their theologically-based justifications were drawn from a
traditional armoury of arguments supporting a “Just War”. Not even
the frightful excesses of the atomic or hydrogen bombs, and the
certainty of resulting genocide, could make more than a temporary
impact on the upholders of Christian militarism.

Christian pacifists by contrast upheld a spiritual view of
peace which only a few church members were prepared to adopt,
and lost out to the rival claims of national security for the allegiance
of most Christians. As a result, the cause has been discredited and
dismissed as the product of sentimental or unrealistic enthusiasts
indulging themselves in vain utopian dreams. The record of their
activities has also been largely ignored by the historians of the major
denominations who have no incentive to question the militaristic
stances adopted by their leaders, and who are still not prepared to
acknowledge the theological validity of the Christian pacifists’
pleadings.

For this reason, it has been left up to two younger scholars,
one from Australia and one from the Netherlands, working
independently of each other, to produce these new and scholarly
accounts of the valiant, if ineffective, efforts of the Christian peace
movement in the first half of the twentieth century. Both books are
the product of careful and insightful research, giving a valuably
fresh perspective on this neglected subject.

Julian Jenkins’ study of Christian pacifism in Germany in
this period is an important book which most capably introduces
English-speaking readers to this topic. Christian pacifism was a
voice in the wilderness at a time when Germany’s militant
aggressions plunged the world twice into a terrible abyss and
inflicted death on millions of innocent victims. The scandal is that
the overwhelming majority of Christians in Germany approved such
actions. Only a tiny minority were opposed, and of these only a
handful did so for Christian pacifist reasons. The most prominent
of these men was a now largely unknown pastor, Friedrich
Siegmund-Schultze, who vigorously championed the cause until he
was effectively silenced after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.
Jenkins’ detailed description of his early career is drawn from the
voluminous records Siegmund-Schultze collected over sixty years of
public life, and provides a excellent case study of the hopes and
disappointments of the followers of the Christian pacifist
movement.

Jenkins begins by outlining the kind of theological-political
views held by the majority of German Protestant churchmen in the
period after 1900, and the reasons for their support of Germany’s
extreme nationalism and aggression. He also gives a notable picture
of the whole ecumenical movement and its frustrated efforts to build
a world of justice and peace. But central to his argument is the
incompatible positions and rival worldviews of the liberal western
churches on the one hand, and the conservative German Lutheran
tradition on the other. In Jenkins’ view, this polarization was a
crucial factor in the failure of Christian peace movement during the
brief intermission of the 1920s. He thus adds significantly to our
knowledge of the history of this period by pointing to the intrepid, if
unsuccessful, efforts to direct German Protestantism away from its
introverted and militaristic heritage, and by demonstrating that the
cause of peace had its upholders, even in those traumatic years.

In analyzing why so many German churchmen in 1914
eagerly supported the pursuit of war, Jenkins follows the arguments
of the noted Hamburg historian, Fritz Fischer. Fischer drew a sharp
dividing line between the German ideological stance and the
western European religious tradition. The former was based on
Luther, Ranke and Hegel, with its exaltation of the authority of the
state, the ever-growing readiness to identify the nation-state with a
divine mission to expand German culture, and the subordination of
the individual to these goals. By contrast, the more democratic
individualistic Protestantism of Britain, France and the United States
owed more to Calvinism, and saw the duty of the church more often
in the role of resisting the misuse of state authority. The divergence
between these views was clearly marked in the churches’ respective
responses to the challenge of war in 1914 and indeed continued to
affect the attitudes and relationships throughout the interwar period.

Only a tiny minority of German Protestants, mainly those
who had earlier established friendly relations with some British
churchmen, shared the western views and were ready to oppose their
colleagues’ bellicose glorification of the German nation. German
Christian pacifism was therefore a cause adopted only by a few
valiant mavericks, who had to struggle hard against the mainstream.
At the same time, they themselves were not immune to the claims of
loyalty to their nation, especially in wartime. It took great courage –
or in some cases recklessness – to adopt such a stance.
Siegmund-Schultze’s career exemplified exactly this dilemma, as is
ably shown in Jenkins’ analysis of the tensions and passions
experienced by the advocates of the German peace movement
before and after the first world war.

Harmjan Dam’s chief emphasis is on the rise and fall of the
main institution created by churchmen to promote the cause of
peace, the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship
through the Churches. This now long forgotten experiment is often
deliberately ignored even by historians of the Ecumenical
Movement. And given the disdain with which the leading German
Protestants treated this organization, it is hardly surprising that this
is the first comprehensive account of its activities to appear in
German, or that it was written by a Dutchman.

In Dam’s view, in the first decade of the century, the desire
to mobilize the churches internationally for the cause of peace was a
bold and forward-looking initiative. The impetus was derived from
the optimistic thinking of the pre-1914 period, especially amongst
the politically liberal wing of Protestantism, promoted by the
advocates of the Social Gospel, as well as by the sponsors of the
international missionary movement. Dam recognizes that the
creation and fostering of the World Alliance was due to the
remarkable talents of a limited number of charismatic individuals,
whose contributions are here sketched vividly and percipiently. He
rightly points out that virtually everyone involved later in the whole
ecumenical movement came to it though their initial contacts in the
World Alliance.

The founder was the Canadian-born, J.Allen Baker, a liberal
Member of Parliament in Britain, and a leading Quaker. He fully
supported the view that the Christian power of love should be
deployed throughout the world to overcome systemic evils such as
war. The Christian churches should therefore play an active role in
resolving international disputes, and should act together in this
endeavour. Siegmund-Schultze was Baker’s most ardent disciple in
this cause, and was therefore deputed to organize the World
Alliance’s founding conference on the shores of Lake Constance.
Fatefully the date was set for 1 August 1914.

The resulting crisis for these lovers of peace as the guns of
August began to explode was predictable, and is excellently
described by both authors. Fervent earnest prayer was shown to be
not enough. But the flame was lit. And in 1919, after the traumatic
tragedies of the first world war, the idea was taken up again in new
hope.

The post-war revulsion against the militarism, pointless
slaughter, and mindless patriotism of the jingoists, all added to the
World Alliance’s initial success. In the 1920s it became the largest
and most popular institution for mobilizing churchmen of many
nations to work for peace and reconciliation.

Unfortunately the country where the World Alliance was
least successful was Germany. The majority of the Protestant clergy
and laity continued to uphold the militaristic and nationalistic views
expressed in their Kriegstheologie, refused to recognize any need for
repentance, lamented the fact that they had not been granted the
victory for which they had prayed so ardently, were appalled by the
forced abdication of the Kaiser and fervently championed his return,
poured scorn on the newly-established parliamentary democracy and
on the so-called “November criminals” of the Socialist-led
Republic, and above all were unanimously opposed to the
“vindictive and oppressive” Treaty of Versailles. Even staunch
supporters of the World Alliance were convinced that this
“infamous Diktat” had attacked Germany’s national honour and
stolen her territory in a conspiracy to humiliate and destroy the
German nation. In such an atmosphere as this, the soft liberal
admonitions for peace and reconciliation as advocated by the World
Alliance had little chance of success. In fact, as Jenkins points out,
the collapse of Imperial Germany, the defeat of World War I, and
the end of Prussian autocracy paradoxically did not lead German
Protestants to any political or theological metanoia, but rather
confirmed their ideological presuppositions and underlined their
prejudices against internationalism, pacifism and Social Democracy.

Both authors skillfully make this clear, using the plethora of
documentary sources and marshaling the evidence in a manner
highly critical of this regrettable German theological tradition. They
show how even dedicated pacifists, such as Siegmund-Schultze,
suffered from an extreme clash of loyalties. These men wanted to
uphold Germany’s national cause, and indeed sought to persuade
their friends abroad of the calamity caused by the Versailles Treaty;
but at the same time they tried to persuade their constituents at
home that another and a very different Germany was desirable.
They were widely accused at home of being traitors to the nation,
and suspect abroad as coming from the pariah nation, Germany. As
Jenkins notes, “unwilling to renounce their national identity or their
commitment to internationalism, the champions of the peace
movement of the churches in Germany were caught on the horns of
an unsolvable dilemma” (p.324).

Nevertheless, by the end of the 1920s, the pacifist cause had
achieved some successes. It is the strength of Harmjan Dam’s book
that he describes in detail the rapid development of the World
Alliance and its various activities, including the debates at its major
conferences. By the end of the decade the World Alliance had 34
national councils and numerous local branches undertaking
activities to advance the cause of peace. The popularity of its
meetings, the eminence of its speakers, and the nobility of the ideals
expressed, seemed to herald the success of its endeavours. At the
same time, the signing of the Locarno Treaty in 1925, and of the
Briand-Kellogg Pact in 1928, seemed to create a new climate in
favour of peace, strengthened by such secular phenomena as
Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front which made a
great impact. .

Dam thus complements Jenkins’ findings, which are more
focused on Germany, and puts them in their wider setting. He shows
how the leaders sought to turn the World Alliance into the spiritual
arm of the League of Nations, not realizing that it suffered from the
same defects as this wider organization. To be sure, the World
Alliance undertook thorough studies of such topics as disarmament
or the European minorities question. Its regional meetings were
particularly helpful, as Dam describes, in finding solutions to the
abrasive problems of religious minorities in the new European
states. Its meetings were filled with inspiring rhetoric and its
resolutions outlined ideal conditions to these thorny issues. The high
point came in 1928 when the World Alliance Conference in Prague
was judged a huge success. But, as Dam shows very well, it had no
executive powers, and since it lacked any firmly-established
political base, it had in fact very little political influence and its
wide-ranging but usually vaguely general resolutions were ignored.

Both authors note that the World Alliance’s impact was
dependent on a mood of international optimism. The person of
Woodrow Wilson and the establishment of the League of Nations
gave some hope that their vision of a world order based on moral
principles was more than an utopia. But the death of Stresemann in
1929, and the onset of the Great Depression, worsened the situation.
Increasingly the political classes in Germany looked for more
effective, or extreme, solutions, both left and right. Nightly battles
began on the streets of Berlin between Communist and Nazi gangs.

The Protestant leaders increasingly looked for an authoritarian
leader who would restore Germany’s national greatness and
security, and only too readily found one in Adolf Hitler. When he
came to power in January 1933, the majority of German churchmen
welcomed him with enthusiasm. The hopes of the World Alliance’s
supporters in Germany were shown to be hopelessly unrealistic.
Siegmund-Schultze, for one, soon recognized the ominous
dangers of Hitler’s dictatorship. Only six months later, he was
expelled from the country by the Gestapo, and as a direct result the
work of the World Alliance in Germany collapsed. The Nazis’
propaganda machine campaigned strongly against all such
phenomena as pacifism or internationalism, as part of an alleged
Jewish-Marxist conspiracy to undermine German strength. Severe
measures were taken to intimidate any supporters of these ideas, and
also to eliminate all pacifist groups or organizations. At the same
time, the Nazis made no secret of their intent once again to use
military force to restore Germany’s world position. In the face of
such a threat, Christian pacifism was shown to be ineffective and
irresolute. As Jenkins rightly notes, the illusion that the world
would be governed by the high ideals of Christian peacemakers was
“shattered by the crunch of marching feet and the sound of fascist
slogans, by a political ideology that was neither liberal nor
international, neither Christian nor rational” (p.192).

The failure of Christian pacifism, as both authors
acknowledge, cannot be solely ascribed to the resurgence of German
nationalism and militaristic aggression. The internal faults of the
peace movement in style, ideology and organization were clear
enough to make it the target of constant criticism throughout these
years. As Winston Churchill caustically noted: “The pacifist cause
was marked by a delight in smooth sounding platitudes, a refusal to
face unpleasant facts, a desire for popularity irrespective of the vital
interests of the state, a genuine love of peace and a pathetic belief
that love can be its sole foundation”. Such an indictment certainly
applied to the World Alliance.

But as Jenkins pointedly argues, the most significant fault
lay in the unwillingness of Germany’s educated and established
classes to accept the consequences of the nation’s defeat in 1918.
Most of the German churchmen who took part in World Alliance’s
activities, or those of other branches of the ecumenical movement,
did so, not because they believed in its idealistic ideology, but
because they were given a platform where they could voice their
opposition to the Treaty of Versailles and their desire to see
Germany’s greatness restored. After Hitler came to power, they
found a more forceful advocate of these views. Even those
Protestants who opposed Nazism, and who after 1934 formed the
Confessing Church, led by Pastor Martin Niemöller, focused their
opposition on resisting the Nazis’ attempts to encroach on the
church’s autonomy. They fully supported Hitler’s foreign and
military policies.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was briefly one of the World
Alliance’s Youth Secretaries, also shared in this ambivalence.
Before 1933 he was completely convinced of the pacifist cause and
expressed his admiration for Gandhi’s advocacy of non-violence.
But after the Nazis came to power, Bonhoeffer altered his stance,
and eventually accepted the need to use force to overthrow Hitler’s
dictatorship, if necessary by assassination.

Jenkins sees the unwillingness of German churchmen,
particularly the Protestants, to support the aims of the Christian
peace movement as part of the fateful developments in the political
and intellectual climate of those years. Their refusal to accept the
verdict of 1918, the systematic rejection and undermining of the
nascent democracy of the Weimar Republic, the scepticism about
the League of Nations, the support given to the parties of the
extreme right, and the failure to counteract the racial ideology of
Nazi antisemitism, were all key factors which assisted Hitler’s rise
to power. In the face of such intransigent attitudes, the Christian
peacemakers’ unfocussed and often sentimental attachment to
patchwork attempts to improve the world’s condition were
increasingly irrelevant and inadequate.

The later chapters in Dam’s book, describing the rapid
decline of the World Alliance after 1933, its inactivity and
irrelevance during the second world war, and its final demise
thereafter, make for sad reading. They reveal how unrealistic had
been the hope that the course of international politics could be
altered through the fervent proclamation of Christian principles by
dedicated and committed pacifists. But Dam puts particular stress
on the failing s of the Alliance’s organization. Its founders, such as
Baker and Siegmund-Schultze, had been pioneering individuals,
acting independently and free from ecclesiastical control. They
sought to be the universal conscience of the world, arousing public
opinion to bring about their desired reforms, especially the
renunciation of war. But while they were right in recognizing that,
after the churches’ disastrous blessing of the guns in the first world
war, the credibility of Christianity was at stake, their remedy was
woefully inadequate. By the 1930s, as the clouds of war gathered
over Europe, the prophetic voices of individual peace advocates
were increasingly disregarded.

This situation heightened the tensions within the World
Alliance. On the one hand, the advocates of the Ecumenical
Movement believed in the need to promote closer international
friendship of and through the churches. A common stance was
required to meet the escalating political dangers. A tighter
relationship with the official churches could bring about joint and
more effective efforts of all the Christian organizations. On the
other hand, other leaders of the World Alliance were reluctant to
sacrifice their freedom of spontaneous proclamation to the
inevitable compromises of church bureaucracies. They could
foresee that, in any such merger, their particular witness to seek
peace could be watered down. Instead, the World Alliance should
seek closer relationship with non-church peace movements, as
happened in France.

Uncertain which way to proceed, and without forceful
leadership, the World Alliance dithered, and was effectively
bypassed by more far-sighted individuals in the ecumenical ranks,
especially J.H.Oldham, who undertook to be the main architect of a
new proposal to bind the churches’ international organizations
together. In fact, in the late 1930s, the initiative passed to the Life
and Work Movement and to Faith and Order, both of which held
major conferences in 1937. As a result, guided by Oldham, they
resolved to combine forces to establish a World Council of
Churches (in process of formation). In 1938 they appointed as its
first General Secretary, a young Dutchman, Visser Œt Hooft, of
Calvinist background and a follower of Karl Barth. Visser Œt Hooft,
who was much more of a General than a Secretary, had little use for
either the liberal theology or the public pronouncements of his
predecessors in the World Alliance, and resented the unwanted
advice they poured upon him as to how they had conducted affairs
earlier. The older generation, in turn, resented being excluded,
after all their years of devoted service to the cause. As
Siegmund-Schultze lamented at the end of 1938: “The past year has
been a torture for me. . . .After all the mistakes of the last year, I
have not much hope for the World Alliance. I do my duty as the
soldier of an army which is soon to die”.

In 1939, when Germany once again plunged the world into
war, the World Alliance could find no credible basis for any peace
initiative. It had failed to follow the advice of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
to rethink its theology and abandon the “social gospel” approach,
which downplayed theological considerations in favour the practical
tasks of peacemaking as the spiritual arm of the League of Nations.
But when this stance was clearly unavailing, the World Alliance had
no alternative strategy to fall back on. Its subsequent paralysis and
inactivity during the war stood in contrast to Visser Œt Hooft’s
energetic measures to keep the members of the World Council
informed and in touch across the warring lines, to take whatever
relief steps were feasible, for example, for refugees, and to begin the
task of planning for a post-war world settlement, in which the
churches should play a constructive role. Above all, he was
responsible for refashioning the theological approach adopted by the
international church bodies.

In 1945, the American branch of the World Alliance, which
had all along heavily subsidized its world-wide activities, decided
that the best way of advancing the cause of peace was to open up the
membership to all religions, not just the Christian churches. But in
Europe, only one national council supported this idea. So many of
the former supporters had either died or been lost because of the
war, and without any alternative sources of funding, it became clear
that there was no more impetus to seek a new beginning as in 1919.
By 1947 the World Alliance dissolved itself.

In 1948, the World Council of Churches held its first and
founding Assembly in Amsterdam. But after the horrendous
experiences of the second world war, it was notable that there was
very much less emphasis on the tasks of promoting peace. In fact,
the onset of the Cold War seemed to render the kind of interwar
peace rhetoric even more insubstantial and unrealistic.
In the World Council’s headquarters in Geneva there hangs a
diagram, depicting the organization’s history as a river, a confluence
of original streams with various significant places and dates
attached. The intent is to give the impression of an ongoing
dynamic body, like a river ever flowing and increasing. But it is
notable that the World Alliance is not mentioned at all. Dam’s
study is clearly designed to remedy this omission, and to pay tribute
to the pioneering and prophetic work of so many dedicated
individuals. In his view, the founding of the World Council of
Churches in its initial form was not an inevitable process but was
influenced far more by personalities than has been acknowledged.
Sufficient justice needs to be given to the existing complications,
contradictions and alternatives which eventually led to the World
Alliance’s demise.

Both these books deserve a wide audience among English
and German readers since they provide authoritative accounts of the
courageous, if flawed, efforts of the Christian peace makers of the
early twentieth century.

John S.Conway
jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

“Nothing is more unfair than to judge the men of the
past by the ideas of the present. Whatever may be said of morality,
political wisdom is certainly ambulatory. . . It behoves wise statesmen
to consider how their policy will appear to imaginations aglow with
excitement and rhetoric.”
D.A.Winstanley, Lord Chatham and the Whig opposition.

Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) H.Hesse ed, Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses
b) ed Woolner, Kurial, FDR, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church, 1933-1945
c) Gallo, For Love and Country: The Italian Resistance

2) Journal articles:

a) Moses, Australian Anglicans in the first world war
b ) Fletcher, Anglicanism and National Identity in Australia since 1962
c) Koch and Falcke, Coming to terms with German guilt

3) Book notes: Hermann Rauschning, ed. Hensel and Nordblom

1) Book reviews

1a) Hans Hesse ed., Persecution and Resistance of Jehovah’s
Witnesses during the Nazi Regime 1933-1945. Bremen: Edition
Temmen 2001. 405 pp ISBN 3-86108-750-2.

This review is re-printed from Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, Vol. 14,
2001/2

The story of the persecution of the Jehovah’s Witnesses under
Nazi rule was little known by historians some twenty years or so ago.
Even among Jehovah’s Witnesses themselves, whilst stories of bravery
under harassment and torture were recounted, there was little
systematic analysis of what had happened and how it had happened.
Witnesses had a very clear theological understanding about why it had
happened but had no evidence that either scholars or the general public
would be interested in their story. Not until professional researchers
began to document and legitimate the experience of non-Jewish victims
of the Third Reich, did the Witness record come into its own.
This book is a landmark in the study of the persecution of the
Jehovah’s Witnesses by the Nazis. It is comprised of an eclectic
collection of essays which add to our understanding both of the details
of individuals” lives and of the complex issues surrounding the whole
area. It makes use of a considerable range of documents not published
before and offers both case studies and a series of broader and
thoughtful analyses.

The authors are all experts, in one way or another, in this field.
They are a mixture of Jehovah’s Witnesses and non-Witnesses. In this
the book is unique. The preface is written by Michael Berenbaum, a
distinguished voice in the study of the Holocaust and a former Director
of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.
The translation is by the late and deeply respected scholar Sybil Milton,
once Senior Historian at the Museum, who also offers two important
essays as a contribution to the book. There are important essays by
other leaders in this field of study and essays by Witnessses who are
workers and researchers for the Watch Tower Society.

Although the emphasis is on the experience of this one group of
people, there is an understanding throughout and a respect for the wider
picture. The story, valuable and important in its own right, needs to be
seen in the context of the horrors of the Holocaust. As Jolene Chu,
author of one of the essays reminds us, “it is a sad and sobering fact
that the Nazi regime executed a brilliant and ruthless war against the
Jews and nearly won”. Michael Berenbaum, in his preface, sets the
context clearly: “Jews were victimized not for what they did but for
who they were. They were targeted for destruction because of what
their grandparents were”. Jewish people in the Third Reich, as we
know, had no choice.

Jehovah’s Witnesses had come to Germany from America in
the 1890s and by the time of the Nazi seizure of power had some
25,000 members in Germany. They had already met some harassment
under Weimar from the SA and other emerging Nazi gangs. From
1933 to the end of the war, the Witnesses found themselves thrown into
a violent and pitched battle with the Nazi authorities, during which
some of the children were taken away to be educated in Nazi homes
and a large number of members of the group were imprisoned and
tortured. Many lost their lives.

The conflict was one of ideologies. The Witnesses had a clear
view of History and their sacred role in it. As a result of these beliefs,
and in spite of the fact that within the limits that their faith allows they
were law-abiding citizens, conflict with the new state was rapid and
brutal.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses were different to other categories of
what the Nazis identified as “enemies of the state”. They were targeted
and persecuted because of their beliefs and the consequences of their
beliefs. Witnesses refused to give the Hitler salute because their
religious beliefs taught them that such a salutation was due only to their
God. Because of their view of history and their role in it as “witnesses”
to their God, they refused similarly to enlist or to bear arms. Equally,
they disobeyed the injunction to cease their missionary work and they
continued to hold their religious meetings. The beliefs and practices
which stimulated the Nazi persecution were also at the heart of the
Jehovah’s Witness resistance.

Resistance, as we know, was both rare and dangerous. If we
look at the behaviour of other minority Christian and secular groups in
the Third Reich, we see, on the whole, a process of compromise,
assimilation or denial. Some members of small religious groups hailed
Hitler as the Messiah and others expunged from their liturgy all
references to anything “Jewish”. Thus hymns and liturgies were
amended to omit the words ‘sabbath” or Jerusalem”. Others were
prepared to hand over to the Nazis the names of any of their members
who had Jewish blood. Many very small groups simply went
underground or ceased their activities.

In the distribution of their literature and in door-to-door
missionary work, the Witnesses, however, offered a real and visible
challenge. Whether at large or in prison or camps, the majority of
Witnesses simply refused to give to the state what they knew belonged
only to God. No compromise, no changing words or re-interpreting,
just a simple standing firm to what they had been taught and believed
as individuals and as families. This was no orchestrated mass
resistance movement; this was a set of individuals, linked by their
beliefs, who refused to bow the knee.

The persecution that followed was relentless. Witnesses found
themselves in prisons and camps all over the Reich. Some of their
stories are told in this book. Margaret Buber, herself an inmate, told us
first of the women Witnesses in Ravensbrück; here their story is retold,
together with the story of women Witnesses in Moringen. We read the
letters of Hans Gartner, set alongside the picture of him as a young man
alongside his four sisters. Hans served sentences in prison and in
Dachau and Mauthausen. His letters are concerned with the welfare of
his wife and children and we follow through these simple earnest
letters, following his fate until we learn that on April 26,1940, he died
in Dachau aged 33. Shortly before his death, close to starvation,
Gartner begged an SS officer for a piece of bread and had in response a
finger cut off.

The Witness story is important in its own right. It is also
important to the continuing and necessary process of studying the
complexity of the dreadful tapestry of horrors that was woven by the
Nazis. There is now an insurmountable degree of evidence to testify to
the courage and steadfastness of numbers of Jehovah’s Witnesses: men,
women and children. These essays offer more detailed case studies of
the lives of Witness prisoners in the camps, wearing with pride their
purple triangle.

As a (non-Witness) scholar of this period, there are of course
some areas I would like to have seen covered here but which are not.
There are some which I would not have included. I wonder, for
example, about the wisdom of including under this title an essay on the
current situation for Witnesses in Germany. I would like to have seen a
different structure in which the historical framework was laid down
more overtly at the outset. All these comments are, however, a measure
of my engagement with the book. Here is the work of a very particular
group of specialists, with a deep understanding of the faith that forged
this resistance. Historians of religion welcomed the publication of this
book in German in 1998. It has been well used by scholars and by
students. This English version is very much to be welcomed. There is a
great deal of interest in this subject. The work and the sources now
become available to a very wide range of scholars in England and
North America. It will also be of interest to the general reader for it is
both scholarly and accessible.

Christine King, Vice-Chancellor, University of Staffordshire, Stafford,
U.K.

b) ed. D.B.Woolner and R.G.Kurial, FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman
Catholic Church in America, 1933-1945. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan 2003. 295 pp. ISBN 1-4039-6168-9

In reviewing this volume of collected papers from a major
international conference, held five years ago at Franklin Roosevelt’s
home, and now Presidential Archive and Library, at Hyde Park, New
York, I must beg your indulgence, since I was one of the participants.
My contribution on Myron Taylor’s war-time mission to the Vatican is
however likely to be superseded by the thorough research of Alexander
Schoerner, as outlined earlier in our July Newsletter. Some other
contributors, such as Michael Phayer, David Alvarez and Peter Kent –
all list members – have in the meanwhile published more substantial
monographs on their respective topics. But this volume brings the
differing points of view together in an attractive, scholarly and readable
form.

F.D.R. was an unfervent Episcopalian, i.e. Anglican, whose
acute political senses taught him the importance of maintaining good
relations with the Roman Catholic hierarchy, including the Pope. In
the opening chapter, Michael Barone surveys the relationship between
this patrician Protestant president and the largely Catholic and urban
voters who provided his political power base, first in New York and
then nationally. Roosevelt’s success, he believes, lay in his
inclusiveness, his warm and humorous optimism and above all his
resolve to take energetic measures to overcome the economic disasters
of the Great Depression. In addition he openly distanced himself from
the kind of Protestant bigotry which in 1928 had so fatally destroyed
the candidacy of his rival, the Catholic New York slum kid, Al Smith.
Catholics of a reformist trend, such as the supporters of the Catholic
Worker, were also attracted by Roosevelt’s social reform mentality.
The only exception was the outspoken, provocative and wholly biased
Fr. Coughlin of Michigan, who proved to be an unwelcome thorn in
Roosevelt’s side.

Readers of this Newsletter will probably be most interested in
the chapters dealing with Roosevelt’s international involvement,
especially with the Vatican. Already in 1937, FDR was concerned
about the looming danger of war, the likely effects on the United
States, and the need to promote the cause of peace. Having served
under Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt had learnt at first hand the
disadvantages of placing too much faith in the League of Nations, but
also of ignoring the potential influence of the Vatican. Pius XII, too, as
Cardinal Secretary of State, had earlier seen the need for good
relations, had come to the USA, and had visited Roosevelt’s home for
just this purpose in 1937. The difficulty lay in the fact that no structure
was in place for diplomatic exchanges, as Congress had closed down
its Vatican embassy several decades earlier for financial reasons.
Given the anti-Catholic sentiment in many Protestant communities,
especially in the south, Roosevelt could not risk asking for its
restoration.

But with the outbreak of war in Europe, Roosevelt felt impelled
to establish contact with the Pope, using the means of a Personal
Representative who would not need Senate approval. The Vatican
signaled immediate agreement. Myron Taylor, a prominent business
man was then appointed and at once set off for Rome. Pius was greatly
relieved to have this support from Roosevelt at a time when his
diplomatic efforts to preserve peace had so signally failed. He very
much hoped that together they could persuade the warring parties to
accept a mediated peace, and that Roosevelt would understand and
support the Pope’s strict impartiality. But it was not to be.

In fact, after Pearl Harbour, Roosevelt and the State Department
became as insistent as others that the Pope should abandon his neutral
stance and join in condemnation of the Axis. Inevitably there was a
cooling of the relationship, especially after the Germans surrounded
and nearly occupied the Vatican in 1943-44. Not until Rome was
liberated could Myron Taylor hasten back to find the Pope now
concerned about the growing menace of the Russian military advance
and the dire needs of the Italian people for relief supplies.

In his chapter, Michael Phayer is highly critical of Pius XII for
his failure to protest sufficiently against the Nazis” crimes, especially
the atrocities of the Holocaust. This was due, he claims, to the
misplaced emphases in the Pope’s mind, when saving the architecture
of Rome was given top priority. By contrast, Peter Kent is also critical
of the Pope, but for protesting too much about the dangerous
encroachments of Soviet Communism. The inflexibility of the Papal
war-aims and the refusal to consider compromises, lest these be seen as
a retraction of earlier denunciations, is seen by Kent as too high a price
to pay. Certainly from 1943 onwards, American policy diverged from
the Vatican’s. Pius regarded the demand for unconditional surrender as
“idiotic”, and was equally appalled by the concessions made at Yalta
and Potsdam. Kent’s later book expands this indictment by suggesting
that the Papal rigidity, though welcomed by many Poles, left the
bishops in eastern Europe with little or no room for manoeuvre. But by
1948, American policy towards Stalin and Communism had changed
dramatically. The Vatican and the State Department supported each
other closely during the crucial elections in Italy in that year.
But even so, there were still strong feelings in the United States
against too close a collaboration with the Vatican, as could be seen in
the unprecedented uproar in 1951 when Truman tried to appoint a
popular General, Mark Clark, as Ambassador to the Holy See. Volumes
of mail from outraged Protestants poured in, and forced Truman to
back down, as Michael Carter relates in his chapter.

In the absence of a regular diplomatic establishment,
maintaining a harmonious relationship fell on the Apostolic Delegate,
Amleto Cicognani, whose 25 years of service in Washington are
excellently described by Fr. Robert Trisco. This is clearly a synopsis of
a much longer work which we may hope Fr. Trisco will soon complete.
So too, David Alvarez’s short chapter is a prelude for his recent book,
Espionage in the Vatican (reviewed here in the July Newsletter). He
summarizes the American contribution to such operations as adding
“little but misdirection, confusion and uncertainty to American policy
toward the Vatican”. Presumably things have improved since then.
The two editors, David Woolner and Richard Kurial, are
respectively Director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute,
and the Dean of Arts at the University of Prince Edward Island. So this
is a valuable piece of international collaboration, which raises
significant historical issues, but avoids religious or political polemic.
As such it usefully complements the earlier studies by Flynn and
Fogarty, and can be highly recommended to students at all levels.
JSC

c) P.Gallo, For Love and Country. The Italian Resistance. Lanham,
Maryland,: University of America Press. 2003 362 pp
ISBN 0-7618-249-0

Professor Patrick Gallo, who teaches at New York University,
has written a useful narrative account of the resistance movement in
Italy in the final stages of the second world war. He adopts a lively
style, including material from interviews with several surviving
participants amongst the resistance fighters during those dramatic days
in Rome and its surroundings. Given the nature of their underground
activities, it is inevitable that little documentary evidence exists, but
Gallo has skillfully exploited a large number of secondary sources in
various languages. It is a pity, however, that the book is marred by
numerous printing errors.

Following the overthrow of Mussolini, and the occupation of
Italy by the German army in September 1943, there were in fact three
wars going on concurrently. First, the struggle to fight the Germans
and their Fascist allies; second, the struggle to see who would emerge
to hold the reins of power in a future Italy; and third, the class struggle
when left-wing elements believed the time had come to implement a
full social revolution and to abolish the past altogether. The
intricacies, rivalries and overlapping of these various factions
inevitably makes for a complex picture. And Gallo’s narrative jumps
rather awkwardly from event to event, perhaps reflecting the confusion
that prevailed. He evokes very well, however, the dangers and miseries
which engulfed Rome during the nine months of German occupation.

His stance is naturally sympathetic to the Italian partisans
whose bravery in urban street attacks on the German occupiers resulted
in unprecedented and horrible reprisals. Here Gallo goes over the same
ground as Robert Katz and others, but corrects numerous details. He
also has a more sympathetic approach to the Vatican, whose members
he believes should also be seen as part of the resistance. He
appreciates the political dilemmas of the Pope, and praises the church’s
humanitarian efforts to assist the victims of Nazi and Fascist
repression. Thus he disagrees with those who believe that Pope Pius
XII could and should have effectively prevented either the deportation
of the Roman Jews in October 1943, or the terrible mass murders in the
Ardeatine Caves in the following spring. Both episodes are here well
described from the victims” point of view.

Gallo is more critical of the Allies for their military mistakes,
such as the failure to move quickly from the Anzio beachhead to
liberate Rome. Likewise he deplores Churchill’s readiness to try and
prop up the Italian monarchy, and his support for outdated right-wing
politicians. Most critically of all he attacks the Germans, whose
ruthless atrocities inflicted on both civilian and military elements were
compounded by their attitude of arrogant superiority towards the
population as a whole. His final chapter, dealing with the post-war
trials of these criminals, expresses his view that more severe sentences
should have been imposed.

Above all, Gallo seeks to uphold the reputation of the freedom
fighters, some 63,000 of whom lost their lives. The memorial
subsequently built over the site of the Ardeatine massacres succinctly
expresses Gallo’s sympathies:

We have been massacred here because we fought against
tyranny and against the foreign enemy for the independence of
our country. Our dream was that of a free, righteous, and
democratic Italy. May our sacrifice and our blood be the seed
of it and a warning for the coming generations.
JSC

2) Journal articles:

a) John Moses, Australian Anglican Leaders and
the Great War 1914-1918: The “Prussian Menace”, Conscription and
National Solidarity, in The Journal of Religious History, Sydney, Vol
25, No.3, October 2001.

The existing studies of the behaviour of the Australian churches
during the First World War fail to evaluate adequately their perception
of the war, in particular that of the Anglican hierarchy. The latter were
the leaders of the then largest denomination in Australia and they were
in general highly educated and well informed about the causes of the
war and in particular about Prussian-German political culture, hence
German war aims. Failure to take this into account results in a flawed
assessment of the Anglican Church’s stance on recruitment and
conscription, and their cultivation of a concept of national
“brotherhood”. The essay takes issue with the view held by some
historians that Australian Anglicanism uniformly pursued a pro-British
agenda at the expense of a pro-Australian agenda during the 1914-18
war.

b) B. Fletcher, Anglicanism and National Identity in Australia since
1962 in The Journal of Religious History, Sydney, Vol 25, no.3,
October 2001.

This paper examines the way in which the Anglican church in
Australia adapted itself to the social and cultural changes after 1962. In
that year the church gained a new constitution and a new freedom to
become more Australian. It also began to reposition itself on such
matters as race, multiculturalism and gender. By so doing it
incorporated the wider changes in Australian life into its institutional
structures and practices. Women and indigenous people came to play a
more important role. The author contends that this stance has
strengthened the church’s position in national life.

c) Two parallel articles in Evangelische Theologie, 2002, no.3 deal
with the issue of coming to terms with German guilt in the post-war
period. D.Koch covers the West German scene, outlining six stages by
which the churches and the wider public tried to cope with the rival
pressures of acknowledging the extent of the crimes committed in the
name of Germany, or of defending themselves by self-justifying
arguments. Even today, there is a reluctance to accept the full extent of
personal or national responsibility, and a danger that such tactics can
lead to further guilt-ridden situations. For his part Heiko Falcke, who
was one of the leading critics of the former communist regime in East
Germany, examines how the state’s manipulation of the term
“antifascism” sought to argue that the GDR and its citizens were
absolved from all Nazi crimes, which were “inherited” only by the
West Germans. Even the persecution of the Jews was downplayed by
the communist leadership, and therefore was never taken up
sufficiently by the churches. But a notable witness was performed by
the church youth group “Aktion Sühnezeichen” in concrete acts of
reconciliation to the Nazis” victims. Falcke too ends by warning that
dealing with the guilt of the past does not absolve the church from
facing the risk of incurring as much or even greater guilt in the future.

3) Book notes:

Hermann Rauschning. Materialien und Beiträge zu
einer politischen Biographie. ed. J.Hensel and Pia Nordblom. Warsaw:
Brostiana 2002. 180 pp.

This excellent collection of papers from an international group
of scholars raises anew the question of the controversial figure of
Hermann Rauschning, the one-time Nazi President of the Senate in
Danzig, who later defected from the Nazi cause, and then wrote the
best-selling exposé, Hitler speaks. The editors” contention is that
Rauschning has been badly served in post-1945 German historiography,
where he is made out to be either a traitor, an unrepentant conservative,
or a pure opportunist. The most interesting essay is by Anthony Carty
of Britain’s University of Derby who discusses Rauschning’s ideas in
his 1937 book The Revolution of Nihilism, a devastating critique of
Nazi radicalism from the pont of view of a German conservative
Catholic. Rauschning was alas! ignored at the time by his fellow
countrymen, but received a much greater audience when his more
famous, but often disputed, book on Hitler appeared just as war broke
out. Carty rightly stresses the fact that the Nazis” nihilistic radicalism
inevitably led with ever greater impetus to the chimera of world
domination and/or extermination of Germany’s enemies. Hitler was
thus more than a megalomanic dictator, but rather a purveyor of the
kind of nihilism brought on by the destruction of Christian moral
values in the first world war and after. It was a pity that, as a source of
direct quotations of Hitler’s own opinions, Rauschning has been heftily
disputed and discredited. But si non e vero, e ben trovato. This small
book will undoubtedly help those able to follow the German debate to
restore Rauschning to his due position as a valuable contemporary
observer of the crisis unfolding around him.

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

Dear Friends,
Contents:

1) Book reviews

a) Steigman-Gall, The Holy Reich
b) Kirby, Religion and the Cold War
c) Brouwer, Modern Women modernizing men
d) Denzler, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort

2) Journal articles: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte
3) Book notes: Davis, A long walk to church; Muller, C. de Foucauld
1) Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich. Nazi Conceptions of
Christianity, 1919-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2003 xvi + 294pp ISBN
0-521-82371-4.

(This review appeared first on H-German on June 6th 2003)

Richard Steigmann-Gall’s lively and sometimes provocative
study of the relationship between Nazism and Christianity breaks new
ground. He takes issue with those, like your reviewer, who argue that
Nazism and Christianity were incompatible, both in theory and practice.
Instead he examines more closely the areas of overlap and the
consequent ambiguities in the minds of many leading Nazis. He rejects
the view that, when Nazi orators before 1933 made frequent use of a
Christian vocabulary, this was purely a tactical device to gain votes.
Later on, such deceptive religiosity would be discarded because no
longer needed. Instead he shows how extensively there was a consistent
appreciation of Christianity as a religious system in the Nazi ranks,
including several members of its hierarchy.

Similarly he disputes the claim that those Christians who flocked
to the Nazi cause were shallow-minded opportunists, jumping on a
popular political bandwagon. Instead he argues that the stressful
conditions of a defeated Germany led many sincere Christians,
particularly Protestants, to regard the Nazi cause as theologically
justified, as well as politically appropriate.

Nazism idealized, even idolized, the German nation and Volk.
Steigmann-Gall shows how this tendency was already present in the
newly-created Bismarckian Reich, and was much fostered by the
Protestant clergy. Their war theology in 1914
asserted divine approval of Germany’s cause and called down damnation
on her enemies.

After her defeat in 1918, the clergy provided the spiritual climate for an
apocalyptic view of Germany’s destiny, valiantly guarding itself against
the onslaughts of the evils of Marxism, Judaism, Bolshevism and
materialism. Such dualistic thinking both ran parallel to and nurtured
the extremism of the radical political groups of the 1920s, out of which
Nazism emerged as the most successful.

Nazism’s most notorious characteristic was its antisemitism.
Many observers have claimed that the Holocaust was the culmination of
centuries of Christian intolerance and persecution. Churchmen, for
their part, have sought to draw a line between earlier Christian
theological anti-Judaism and the far more virulent Nazi racial
antisemitism.But Steigmann-Gall, following Uriel Tal, shows how easily both
Catholic and Protestant Germans could merge their religious antipathies
with the Nazis’ political campaign. On the other side, he shows how
many Nazis believed in the religious basis of their hatred of Jews, who
formed a negative point of reference for an ideology of national-religious
integration. Luther’s stance against the Jews could thus be supported,
for more than merely tactical reasons. And Hitler’s support of “positive
Christianity” was an attempt to overcome confessional differences in
order to concentrate Christian forces against their arch-enemy, the Jew.
To be sure many leading Nazis were anti-clerical. But this venom was
principally directed against those priests and pastors who put their
institutional loyalties ahead of their national ones. This did not prevent
these Nazis from believing that their movement was in some sense
Christian.

It was on this basis that such Nazis as Gauleiter Wilhelm Kube,
the Bavarian Minister of Education, Hans Schemm, or the Prussian
Minister of Justice, Hanns Kerrl, who later became Reich Minister of
Ecclesiastical Affairs, could seek an alliance with those elements in the
churches, especially Protestants, who supported the Nazis’ authoritarian,
anti-Marxist and antisemitic policies. This was not, Steigmann-Gall
believes, a mere opportunistic relationship on either side. Both believed
they were adopting a genuinely Christian stance, “following a call to
faith from God, which we hear in our Volk movement” (p. 73).

Following this interpretation, Steigmann-Gall finds that even
those Nazis most hostile to the churches could still have an ambivalent
relationship to Christianity. Alfred Rosenberg, for example, in his book
The Myth of the Twentieth Century made numerous positive references
to Christ as a fighter and antisemite, and was even warmer in praise of
the noted mediaeval mystic Meister Eckhart. If the Church could be
purged of its Jewish and Roman accretions, Rosenberg could look
forward to a Nordic-western soul faith which would reincarnate a purer
Christianity. In this he was only adopting the ideas of at least one
extreme wing of “German Christian” Protestantism.

Certainly, these “paganists” as Steigmann-Gall calls them,
exercised little control over Nazi policy. Hitler stoutly and consistently
rejected any talk of an ersatz religion based on German myths or
culminating in Valhalla. The “positive Christianity” of such leaders as
Goering continued to stress the advantages of a national
non-denominational Christianity in such areas as education or social
welfare. And even strident anti-clericals such as Goebbels or Streicher
supported the idea of an Aryan Christianity as an admirable moral
system. The fact that the churches were the only major institutions
which did not suffer Gleichschaltung shows, in Steigmann-Gall’s view
“the fundamentally positive attitude of the Nazi state toward at least the
Protestant Church as a whole”. For this reason, in 1934, Hitler refused to
back the radicals, and in 1935 appointed an old crony and primitive
Protestant, Hanns Kerrl to be Minister of Church Affairs. The kind of
Christianity Kerrl affirmed was proclaimed in his speeches:
Adolf Hitler has hammered the faith and fact of Jesus into the
hearts of the German Volk. . . . True Christianity and National
Socialism are identical.

But Kerrl was appointed to co-ordinate the rival Protestant factions and
he failed. Thereupon, Steigmann-Gall notes, Hitler turned against the
churches and abandoned institutional Protestantism once and for all.

But even so, according to one source, he still adhered to his original
ideas and was of the opinion that “Church and Christianity are not
identical” (p.188).

The differences between this interpretation and those put forward
earlier are really only of degree and timing. Steigmann-Gall agrees that
from 1937 onwards, Nazi policy toward the churches became much
more hostile. The influence of such notable anti-clericals as Bormann
and Heydrich grew exponentially and was restrained only by the need for
war-time compromises. On the other hand, Steigmann-Gall argues
persuasively that the Nazi Party’s 1924 program and Hitler’s
policy-making speeches of the early years were not just politically
motivated or deceptive in intent. He agrees with the view taken by
Hitler’s fellow-countryman, the Austrian theologian Friedrich Heer, and
considers them to be a sincere appreciation of Christianity as a value
system to be upheld. Yet he does not really want to admit that this Nazi
Christianity was eviscerated of all the most essential orthodox dogmas.
What remained was the vaguest impression combined with anti-Jewish
prejudice. Only a few radicals on the extreme wing of liberal
Protestantism would recognize such a mish-mash as true Christianity.
Steigmann-Gall is perfectly right to point out that there was never
any consensus among the leading Nazis about the relationship between
the Party and Christianity. As Baldur von Shirach later commented: “Of
all the leading men in the Party whom I knew, everyone interpreted the
party program differently. . . Rosenberg mystically, Goering and some
others in a certain sense Christian” (p.232). Ambiguities and
contradictions were numerous. 1) Over the years hostility grew even
when there remained a lingering desire to uphold an ongoing Christian
element, combining antisemitism and nationalism in some kind of
positive assessment.

Steigmann-Gall’s achievement is to have fully explored the
extensive records of the Nazi era to illustrate these often conflicting
conceptions of Christianity, and to assemble the evidence in a carefully
weighed evaluation. He makes an almost convincing case. But his final
view that post-1945 ideological imperatives meant that Nazism had to be
depicted as an evil and unchristian empire seems overdrawn. Yet he is
undeniably right to point out how much Nazism owed to German
Christian, especially Protestant, concepts, and how much support it
gained from a majority of Christians in Germany. That is certainly a
sobering lesson to be drawn from this interesting and well-reasoned
account.

1) As an example of the differences between Nazi leaders, the
following anecdote is recorded: On meeting Kerrl shortly after his
appointment as Church Minister, Heinrich Himmler told him: “I
thought you were only acting piously hitherto, but now I see you
actually are pious. I shall treat you badly in future”. When the
astonished Kerrl asked why, the Reichsführer SS answered: “Well, in
your view, the worse you are handled here below, the better marks
you will receive later”.
JSC

1b) Ed. Diane Kirby, Religion and the Cold War. Basingstoke,U.K.:
Palgrave-MacMillan. 2003. 245pp. ISBN 0-333-99398-5

This collection of conference papers came about through the
initiative of the editor, Diane Kirby. She realized that the time had come
for church historians to move forward in time from their intense
preoccupation with the events of the Second World War. She therefore
convened an international group of scholars from Britain, Germany,
Canada and the USA to examine the use and misuse of religion during
the political struggle commonly known as the Cold War. Some of these
pieces have already appeared in print, such as Peter Kent’s fine study of
Pope Pius XII’s lonely Cold War, or Matthew Hockenos’ examination of
the post-1945 German Evangelical Church, which is due out shortly
from the Indiana University Press.

Together these essays present several versions of how the power
of religion was harnessed to the policy goals of various states. In
particular, the need for North American and western European leaders to
forge a religiously-justified, but militarily armed, coalition against the
Soviet Union is extensively described. Frank Coppa begins by showing
that the Vatican’s long-standing hostility towards Communism was not
allayed by the war-time association with the west against Nazism. He
contends that Pius was right to criticize Roosevelt and Churchill for their
optimistic assumption that Stalin would be ready to co-operate in a new
era of peace and collaboration. Given the revolutionary and
anti-Christian record of the Communist Party, and its zeal in 1945 in
seizing control of all of eastern Europe, such fears of Soviet expansion
were certainly justified.

Peter Kent similarly shows that Pius XII was the first to mobilize
concern about the Communist threat in Italy, and to seek American aid
in repelling it. This was the period when the Vatican’s aims most closely
coincided with those of the United States. In effect, as he points out,
Pius’ readiness to co-operate with the United States meant the
abandonment of Vatican neutrality, and opened the way for charges that
the Pope was descending into the political arena. Kent is also critical of
Pius’ rigid ideological hostility, because this placed the Catholic bishops
in the Soviet-controlled areas in an embattled situation and prevented
any more workable compromises. He implies that Soviet repression was
due to the Vatican’s implacable opposition, but the evidence is surely
debatable. Only after the death of Stalin did Pius begin to urge the need
for some accommodation in order to facilitate the church’s pastoral
tasks. This prepared the way for a new approach in the 1960s.

In her own essay, Diane Kirby demonstrates how President
Truman sought to mobilize his countrymen by showing that the conflict
with the Soviet Union was a particular sort of Christian enterprise.
Opposition to the “evil empire” of communism was the moral
component, matching the military determination, both designed to
protect the west against the atheistic godless Marxist creed. The change
in Truman’s stance from his earlier willingness to co-operate with Stalin
cannot however be attributed to pressure from the Vatican, though he
undoubtedly came to see that the Vatican could be a useful ally,
especially in Italy. However, the American hopes that Catholic influence
in eastern Europe could be mobilized for some sort of resistance
movement were not to be realized. So too Truman’s plans for a similar
recruitment of Protestants through the newly-formed World Council of
Churches met with even greater scepticism. Truman’s simplistic
anti-communist moralism was rejected. Nevertheless, when the World
Council held its Second Assembly in the United States in 1954,
President Eisenhower himself opened the session, clearly linking politics
and religion. The latter remained a strategic weapon in the Cold War
arena, and was to re-appear thirty years later under Pope John Paul II.
Matthew Hockenos contributes a lively and insightful analysis of
the German Evangelical Church after 1945, as it tried ˆ often reluctantly
– to come to terms with its lack-lustre record during the Nazi period.
John Pollard examines the political factors at play in Italy, and notes that
while the Vatican readily opposed communism, the church leadership
was also somewhat dubious about the Christian Democratic Party. Many
would have preferred a more authoritarian regime, or at least one more
susceptible to clerical control.

Equally interesting is the short paper by Anna Dickinson on the
Russian Orthodox Church. She points out that the war saved this church
from virtual extinction. But the price of its revival was subordination to
the policies of the regime. Its dependence ruled out the possibility of
independent action. The Church was useful in strengthening Soviet
control over such areas as the re-conquered Ukraine, where the
ambitions of Roman Catholics had to be thwarted. This aim, she claims,
was more important than establishing the Russian Orthodox Church’s
presence abroad in such bodies as the World Council of Churches. But
this also was a strategy agreed between the Church and the Soviet State.
In effect, until 1960, the war-time gains made by the Church remained
intact.

George Egerton breaks new ground with his interesting
assessment of the influence of religious ideas on Canadian politics in the
post-war period. The Canadian churches provided religious justification
for Canada’s war effort in 1939 and again in the Korean War. But at the
same time a more liberal shift took place with the support given to the
plan to give human rights an enhanced legal and constitutional status, as
in the UN’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. However, the initially
guarded attitude of the Canadian Liberal Government, the opposition of
conservative churchmen and the outbreak of the Korean War, all
combined to delay implementation of such a Bill of Rights for another
decade.

Ian Jones, by contrast, looks at the responses to the Cold War
amongst local clergy in Britain. Did they share the leaders’ need to
mobilize Christian opposition to the dangers of communism? On the
whole yes, but largely to contrast the laxity of Christian discipleship with
the resolute dedication and commitment of Communists. In fact both
were to suffer from the increasing materialism and individualism of the
subsequent decades.

Two interesting epilogues are provided by Hartmut Lehmann’s
account of the changes in the status of Martin Luther in the
communist-controlled German Democratic Republic, and by Tony
Shaw’s account of how religious propaganda was used in Cold War
film-making in the United States in the 1950s. These round out a
helpful compendium of articles whose coherence and interlocking views
provide an excellent starting point for further research ahead.
JSC

1c) Ruth C.Brouwer, Modern women modernizing men. The changing
missions of three professional women in Asia and Africa, 1902-69.
Vancouver: U.B.C. Press 2003
198 pp. Paper $29.95 ISBN 0-7748-0953-1

The first half of the twentieth century saw challenging
developments in the Christian missionary endeavour throughout the
world. Imperialism was almost everywhere abandoned. Paternalism and
racial superiority were relegated to the past. Preaching the gospel
dogmatically gave way to practical Christian witness of service.
Overseas mission boards transformed themselves into partnerships.
Younger churches were born. And, in the era of interest to Ruth
Brouwer, gender roles were overthrown in favour of professional
ministry, particularly by women, no longer content to be regarded merely
as helpmeets of missionary men.

Ruth Brouwer, who teaches at King’s College, University of
Western Ontario, exemplifies these trends through the lives of three
Canadian women missionaries in India, Korea and Africa. Largely
because the missionary history has also developed in recent decades, it
is no longer fashionable to write the kind of hagiographic biography of
missionaries so popular in earlier years. Instead the trend is to devote
attention to the culture of the recipients. So while Brouwer’s splendidly
researched study of these women runs counter to today’s trend, it is
nevertheless a significant rescuing of the achievements of three notable
Canadian pioneers who embarked on ambitious schemes to enhance
Christian medical and educational services in their respective areas of
the world. In particular, they were engaged as professionals in training,
or as her title indicates, in modernizing men.

Dr. Choné Oliver was the first to go out in 1902 from rural
Ontario to rural Rajputana in the hinterland of central India. After many
years in this isolation, Oliver recognized the need to abandon the former
attitude whereby medical services were used to open doors for the
preaching of Christianity, and evangelism was given priority on the local
level. Instead Oliver emerged as one of the champions of justifying the
ministry of healing in its own right, following the example of Jesus
himself. But such a witness of Christian service could not afford to be
second-rate. Only the best would do. In the 1920s the Indian provincial
governments began to improve the quality of their medical services.
Oliver and her colleagues in the newly-founded Christian Medical
Association of India therefore launched a vigorous campaign for having
well-trained Christian doctors, both men and women, to provide the kind
of health and healing so obviously needed. In this way, they believed,
Christian missions could overcome the stigma, not only of being
foreign, but also being sub-standard.

Oliver’s career thus led her to become the secretary and
promoter of the CMAI, and in particular a fervent advocate of having an
all-Indian Christian Union Medical College to serve the needs of
post-colonial India. The model already existed in China, where John
D.Rockefeller had provided the funds for the Peking Union Medical
College. (Missions in China always had priority, both in supporters’
interest and in funding). But, in the case of India, this scheme came at a
bad moment. At the end of the 1920s, the Great Depression choked off
donations. The mission boards in Britain and the USA were
discouraging. And while the Indian princes and maharajahs had money,
none was prepared to put up the millions of rupees necessary for such an
ambitious scheme. Oliver worked tirelessly with her male colleagues to
keep the idea going. On a smaller scale, plans were made at the end of
the 1930s to upgrade the Christian Missionary Medical School for
Women at Vellore, founded by the redoubtable and charismatic woman
director Ida Scudder. But Scudder and her American backers wanted to
keep their hospital for women alone. It was only later, after Oliver had
retired that Vellore developed to become the world-famous medical
centre of subsequent years. Her contribution to this institution is
therefore only now getting its due recognition.

Florence Murray’s experience in Korea in the years after the first
world war ran on similar lines. She too sought to enhance the medical
services and facilities of the Presbyterian Mission. She too was unwilling
to be confined to the traditional women’s sphere in missionary medicine.
Integration, rather than gender separation, was, for her, the way forward
professionally. She saw the need to have the best possible training in
western methods for Korean young women and men. She was obliged,
however, to recognize that, for most women, marriage was all-important
and would bring an end to any career. So she concentrated on the more
efficacious training of men, who could be expected to serve for a
life-time. Perhaps she underestimated the kind of reaction her insistence
on being a “hard taskmaster” would have on young interns, conscious of
their superiority as men. Culture tensions were inevitable. But as time
went on, she demonstrated a growing willingness to learn from and with
her male associates. In any case her authority as hospital superintendent
came to be shared, mainly for political reasons. Japanese antagonism
against western missionaries was increasing. After Pearl Harbour,
Murray was allowed to keep working until compulsorily repatriated in
exchange for some Japanese in America.

As soon as she could after the war was over, Murray returned to
Korea, but not to the same hospital which was now under communist
control. In Seoul she was able to link up with many exiles from the
north, and still championed the kind of medical standards she had striven
for in earlier years. She was particularly helpful in persuading funding
agencies at home to provide scholarships for young Korean doctors,
many of whom she had taught in the first place. Even after retirement in
1961 she stayed on in Korea to work at a small leprosy hospital.
Throughout her life her dedication as a medical missionary was both
evident and inspiring.

Margaret Wrong was the daughter of a distinguished professor of
history at the University of Toronto, and her career was closely linked to
the new ecumenical Christian movement. After the first world war she
helped to organize the European Student Relief programme of the World
Student Christian Federation, and then was invited to undertake a new
venture by the International Missionary Council. This was to establish an
International Committee on Christian literature for Africa, a liberal
gesture recognizing the need to promote not just literacy programmes
throughout the continent, but also to encourage the publication of young
African authors in their own as well as colonial languages. Margaret
Wrong became the catalyst for such endeavours, working out of London,
but frequently touring parts of Africa to prod both government and
missionary boards to see the needs for the future, and to promote local
talent. Almost inevitably such opportunities were only for men. But she
also fostered the kinds of writing on domestic subjects which would help
ordinary women. Her work matched directly the new-found interests of
the colonial governments in establishing educational programmes as part
of the effort to “prepare” Africans for eventual self-government. At the
same time her influence helped the missions to evolve beyond the
traditional paternalism, even though many expatriate missionaries came
to deplore what they saw as the excessive anti-colonialism of their
pupils.

For women, possibly, the most useful help came with adult
literacy movements. Margaret Wrong did much to facilitate the
publication of such materials. But above all she promoted the closest
collaboration with Africans in defining what was needed and getting
them to write suitable text books. Almost inevitably such writers were
men.

As Ruth Brouwer correctly notes, the careers of these three
women reflected new patterns in the inter-war missionary movement.
On the one hand, they faced and partook of increasingly secular
tendencies in the West, and on the other responded to the goal of the
modernizing and nationalizing elites of the colonized and missionized
societies. She could have made the point that all three owed much to the
influence of the notable ecumenical statesman John R. Mott, who
inspired so many young women and men, especially Canadian, to offer
their services to foreign peoples and to devote their lives in the task of
evangelizing the world in their generation. They also represented a new
stage in western feminism. They were able to play expansive roles
because of their pride in being professionals, but at the same time
modernizers confident that their skills were the needed ones for the
mainly male recipients.

Of course, in later years, these goals have been questioned. The
missionary era is effectively over. But the humanitarianism and
international vision of these women of faith, sustained by their belief in
the social relevance of Christianity, should not be forgotten. They stood
in and developed a great tradition of service overseas, and indeed handed
it on to a host of secular voluntary agencies, especially here in Canada.
We are indebted to Ruth Brouwer for her helpful and sympathetic
account, placing these women’s notable contributions in their historical
setting.
JSC

d) Georg Denzler, Widerstand ist nicht das richtige Wort. Katholische
Priester, Bischoefe und Theologen im Dritten Reich. Zurich: Pendo
Verlag. 2003. ISBN 3-85842-479-X

Fifty years ago, a German Protestant theologian characterized the
churches’ stance towards Nazism as one of “reluctant resistance”. But
Georg Denzler has a harsher verdict for the Catholics. Their attitude was
neither active reistance, nor even passive opposition. At best, it was a
partly dissenting behaviour. Resistance is therefore not the right word,
even though propagated ever since 1945 by all the official organs of the
German Catholic church. In this new series of essays, several of which
were broadcast on Bavarian radio, Denzler, who taught at Bamberg
University, recapitulates the views already advanced in earlier books.

He is highly critical of all the prevarications, delusions and hypocrisies
which have led so many Catholics to evade coming to terms with their
Nazi past, just as he is equally appalled by the illusions, nationalism and
obedience to usurped authority, which characterized the Catholic church
during the Nazi years. As a resolute historian, Denzler has investigated
all the relevant sources carefully but sceptically, and is well aware of the
pitfalls and temptations, as well as the persecutions suffered by Catholics
at the Nazi hands. Above all, he is familiar with the vast extent of
Catholic publications and speeches, from which he draws appropriate
quotations to prove his points. His criticisms of the hierarchy’s timidity
and lack of unity in face of Hitler’s assault are therefore well founded,
and indeed have been frequently expressed before. He similarly has
little time for the apologetic tone of the “official” historiography, which
has been very productive ever since Rolf Hochuth’s attacks of the 1960s,
but which has continued to stress the Catholic Church’s “Resistance” to
Nazi encroachments.

To show that this is not enough, Denzler gives some fine insights
into Catholic behaviour, both pro- and anti-Nazi, including some excellent
short portraits of Catholics, some of whom are virtually unknown. For
example, he draws attention to such theologians as Anton Stonner, one
of the now ignored sympathisers with Nazism, or, on the other side,
Chaplain Joseph Rossaint and Fr Franz Reinisch who was executed for
refusing to serve in the Geman military because of his political
opposition to the demon Hitler. The short memoir of Georg Moenius is a
model of its kind. Neither he, nor such Nazi activists as Fr. Josef Roth
and the former priest Albert Hartl, are commemorated today, except by
such maverick historians as Denzler. But their services, for or against
the Nazi state, need to be remembered. And that is Denzler’s merit.
The book ends with a short but scathing review of Daniel
Goldhagen’s latest publication on the church and the Holocaust. Denzler
rightly acccuses Goldhagen of failing to do his historical homework, and
instead of relying on secondary polemical sources for his diatribe. In
fact, he has found a very appropriate quotation from Goldhagen’s own
work to describe this latest effusion: “This is an artifical construction of
half-truths in the service of an ideology. And it is so full of extraordinary
factual mistakes that it amounts to a pattern of falsehoods and
distortions.”
JSC

2) Journal articles:

The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Vol.15, (2002) no.2, has
no less than three articles in it by list-members: Beth Griech-Pollele
summarizes the contents of her recently-published biography of Cardinal
Galen, omitting the overly moralistic inferences but stressing his role as
an ardent anti-Communist. Susanne Brown-Fleming gives us the paper
about Cardinal Muench which she delivered at last year’s German
Studies Association meeting, as briefly mentioned in last December’s
issue of this Newsletter.

And Gerhard Besier throws light on the divisions within the Geman
Evangelical Church about the Spanish Civil War. In addition Armin
Boyens reflects briefly on the World Council of Churches’ attempts to
come to terms with the past, while Kristine Fischer-Hupe describes
post-1945 German church historiography, and the different approaches
adopted by catholics and protestants. The issue, as usual, concludes
with more than 150 pages of bibliography for church history publications
for the period September 2001 to August 2002. This is an unrivalled
service, covering all parts of the globe, and is worth the effort of
perusing the entries with care.3) Book Notes:

Nathaniel Davis, A Long Walk to Church. A contemporary history of
Russian Orthodoxy, 2nd edition. Boulder, Colorado: Westview press
2003. 368 pp.

This second edition of a highly stimulating account of the Russian
Orthodox Church revises and updates the original of 1995. Much has
happened in between, and Davis has kept his ear close to the ground,
having originally served for many years in the American Embassy in
Moscow. New trials, troubles and opportunities have occurred. The
church’s attempts to regain its hold over Russia’s national traditions can
be seen in the controversial canonization process of the last Czar,
Nicholas II. More problematic have been the attempts to ward off
competition, both from energetic protestant groups, as well as Roman
Catholic and Greek Catholic (Uniate) communities. Schisms have
occurred in the Ukraine, and the Orthodox hold over large parts of
Siberia is still tenuous. But the Church manifests a luminous faith, and
is struggling not only to open new parishes, but also to reawaken the
faith long overlaid by communist atheism. New recruits for the
priesthood and monasteries are coming forward, but still more are
needed. Institutional rebuilding and moral leadeership for the nation are
huge, as yet unsolved, tasks. Nathaniel Davis is an excellent guide.

Jean-Marie Muller, Charles de Foucauld. Frère universel or
moine-soldat? Paris: Editons la decouverte, 2002. 237 pp

Charles de Foucauld was one of the most notable figures in French
Catholic church life in the early twentieth century. His resolve to go off
to the wilderness of the Saharan desert in order to convert the tribal
natives, by whom he was later murdered, gave him a fame which could
easily lead to a belief that he deserved to be made a saint. (The
Protestant equivalent was Albert Schweitzer, also dedicating his life to
the African natives). But Jean-Marie Muller, who is an experienced
writer, and an advocate for pacifism, has now written this questioning
biography to challenge the prevailing hagiography. He points out that
Foucauld was a man of his time. He grew up in the aftermath of France’s
1870 defeat, and like many others, saw the conquest of Africa as a
partial recompense. His identification with the French colonialist and
military rulers of the Sahara, and seeming agreement with their
pacification measures, raises serious questions. So too, his stance on the
outbreak of war in 1914 saw an outburst of Germanophobia and
revanchism which would seem hardly compatible with his saintly
reputation. Muller explores the seeming contradictions between the
hermit of the desert expounding brotherly love, and the fiery Frenchman
with his militant nationalism. But he confesses he can’t provide a
complete explanation for such a paradox.

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

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

Dear Friends,
An Ecumenical Gesture
It is recorded that on the painted ceiling of the Chapel
“Mater Redemptoris” in the Papal Lateran University in Rome, which
depicts the heavenly Jerusalem, we see not only several Catholic martyrs of
the twentieth century, including Edith Stein, but also the Protestant German
martyr Elisabeth von Thadden, denounced to the Gestapo and subsequently
murdered in 1943, and the Orthodox Pavel Florinskij.
Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Breward, History of the Churches in Australasia
S. and W.Emilsen, Mapping the Landscape
b) Rutherdale, Women and the White
Man’s God
c) Feldkamp, Goldhagen’s unwillige Kirche
d) V.Perica, Balkan Idols 

 

2) Book notes: Hew Strachan, The First World War
3) Articles

a) McNutt, Adolf Schlatter and the Jews

Book Reviews:

1a) I. Breward, A History of the Churches in Australasia, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001, 474pp, $110.00 (AUS)

Ian Breward’s recent contribution to Henry and Owen Chadwick’s seminal
series, ‘Oxford History of the Christian Church’, is a masterful treatment of
a vast topic. Breward, who is Emeritus Professor of Church History in
Melbourne’s United Faculty of Theology, was given an enormous task when
commissioned to write a general history of the Churches throughout the
Australasian region, from first contact in July 1681 when the Apostolic
Prefecture of Terra Australis was established, through to the present day.
Breward was an obvious choice to be the author – he had already written the
History of Australian Churches, which was published in 1993 by Allen &
Unwin, and is without doubt the most prolific ecclesiastical historian that
the region has produced. Nonetheless, the size of the project would have
daunted a more fainthearted historian, yet there is no doubt that Breward
has succeeded in his task, and that the finished product is a fitting addition
to the Chadwicks’ series.

The scope of Breward’s work is evident when one considers the geographic
– not to say cultural – margins of the topic: New Caledonia, Melanesia, New
Zealand, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga
and, of course, Australia, all fall within his view. But this is then
overlaid, by necessity, with the multi-denominational perspectives of the Anglican,
Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist-Uniting and Pentecostal Churches, as
well as the numerous indigenous variants of these that grew up in many of
the islander Churches. Breward takes his readers on a geographical and
ecclesiological journey that winds its way through denominational
sensitivities, the complexities of missionary engagement with local
populations and the vexed issue of what constitutes ‘missionary success’
amongst non-Western audiences, and the ever-present tension between
Church and State. Indeed, the prominence Breward gives to the Christian
orientation of many high profile political figures (not least among these
being the Aboriginal pioneers of reconciliation, Eddie Mabo and Pat
Dodson) is suggestive of a certain commitment to political engagement
within the Churches generally. There is also, naturally enough, a
chronological narrative within the book that negotiates the development
from missions to Churches, including the changing nature of the Churches
against the backdrop of evolving ecclesiastical structures, the evolution of
the Australasian societies themselves (as the loci of the Churches’ contexts),
wars and depressions, and the search for religious credibility in the
liberalizing sixties.

As a work of sociologically informed history, the book is invaluable, and
asks some important questions of both anthropology and missiology; why,
for example, did missions succeed so well amongst the Tahitians and Maori
(pp.38, 45-47), and yet not at all amongst Australia’s indigenous peoples
(pp.4ff)? Yet within all of this, Breward is able still to present the
Church as fundamentally a human institution, and not an anonymous bureaucratic
machine. The personal element is never far from the surface – again, not
surprising, perhaps, given that Breward is, first and foremost, a Christian
minister and only then and thereby a Church historian. In this light, there
are some intriguing personalities that Breward brings to the fore. Of
particular interest are the women, all too often ignored in the past from
broad ecclesiastical surveys. Mary MacKillop, for example, whose
commitment to the education of poor children led to the founding of the
Sisters of St. Joseph was – in spite of the not inconsiderable setback of
excommunication in 1871 – beatified in 1995 (pp.131-133). Similarly,
Caroline Chisolm exemplified the best of female lay influence, by using her
deep Catholic confession as a basis for urging better conditions for
impoverished – and often exploited – migrants (pp.70-71).

On the other hand, Breward highlights a number of rather more unsavoury
aspects of the Australasian Churches’ history. The fact, for example, that the
removal of indigenous children from their parents – a State-run program of
assimilation that was tacitly endorsed by the major denominations – did not
end, in Western Australia at least, until 1980 (p.246)! Or the fact that the
first Aboriginal Roman Catholic priest was not ordained until 1975. Or the
conflation of nationalism with religion in Fiji, when Colonel Rabuka – who
led successful military coups in that country in 1987 – decreed that
Indian-born Fijians had either to convert to Christianity or leave the
country.

Materially, therefore, the book is a mine of information that deserves a
place in every library and every bookshop. The bibliographical lists at the
book’s end are, in themselves, valuable. There are a few structural flaws, to
my mind, mainly as a result of the vastness of the topic. There are, for
example, often sudden shifts in narrative direction that tend to jar in the
reader’s mind. It can be disconcerting, for example, to read about religious
nationalism in one paragraph and then in the next to be confronted with the
challenges of feminist theology. However, such disruptions to narrative and
structural flow do not in any significant sense detract from what is
otherwise an illuminating and richly-sourced volume.

Given his recent retirement, one may suspect – but not wish! – that this will
be Breward’s last major work. If it is, he could scarcely have written a more
fitting conclusion to his career.

S. Emilsen & W.W. Emilsen (eds), Mapping the Landscape: Essays in
Australian and New Zealand Christianity. Festschrift in Honour of
Professor Ian Breward, New York: Peter Lang, 2000, 368pp, US$65.95.

Ian Breward, Emeritus Professor of Church History at Melbourne’s
Theological Hall, is undoubtedly one of Australasia’s most respected
historians, in both Church and secular circles. His teaching has been
enormously influential on generations of ministerial ordinands, his
preaching has helped innumerable parishioners, and his academic writing
has been both prolific and ground-breaking. It is somewhat disappointing,
therefore, that this Festschrift, intended as are all such volumes to be due
recognition of his sterling service, is so lacklustre in quality.
Festschrifts are often problematic affairs. One has only to think of
Bonhoeffer’s anguish at not being invited to contribute to a volume
honouring Barth on the occasion of the latter’s 50th birthday in 1936. This
volume similarly falls short, and not merely because some of Breward’s
closest fellow-scholars and friends have, like Bonhoeffer, been inexplicably
overlooked. (Where, for example, are Stewart Gill, Andrew Hamilton and
Ken Manley, all Australian Church historians of note and long-time
associates of Breward’s? Where, even, is James Packer, fellow historian of
Puritanism?).

The book itself is divided into two major sections, on Australia and New
Zealand respectively, a division which in many ways mirrors the course of
Breward’s own life. Indeed, the first major article is a short biography,
which illustrates how close Breward’s involvement in ecclesiastical and
academic spheres in both Australia and New Zealand has been. Again, the
geographical motif is reflective not only of Breward’s personal journeys but
indeed very much of his pedagogical agenda, according to which he has
viewed the mapping of contours within the Church histories of his two
countries as absolutely essential (and, more to the point, still
deficient). The structure of the book thus makes a great deal of sense.

Moreover, within both sections, there are some gems of articles that deserve wider readership.
Chris Mostert’s claim for the viability and indeed necessity of
non-contextual theology that takes the epithet ‘catholic’ seriously, is a
profound piece of writing that combines a thorough awareness of the
contemporary Australian theological scene with a deep familiarity with
Moltmann. Stuart Piggin’s contribution on the existence of a uniquely
Australian Christology demonstrates the extent to which a ‘down under’
Christ may in fact be precisely the type of messiah-figure that a suffering
world needs. And John Tonkin’s article, in which he surveys the unusually
harmonious relationship between an evangelical Cathedral Dean, a
missionary Archbishop and an Anglo-Catholic precentor in 1960s Perth,
exemplifies what good Church history is all about.

Within the New Zealand section, too, some of the contributions are worthy
of note. Graeme Ferguson reflects on the theological relevance to regional
identity of New Zealand’s heroic but fateful participation in the Gallipoli
campaign of 1915. Peter Matheson, also, gives a typically lucid account of
the evolution of theology in New Zealand, from the first days of missionary
contact with Maori, through to the responsiveness and creativity of
postmodern theology in more recent years.

Unfortunately, however, many of the other articles are less than satisfactory
for a volume that, in seeking to honour one of the brightest Church leaders
in the Australasian region, should really have set its benchmark of quality
higher. Denham Grierson’s piece, entitled ‘History as Narrative Fiction’, is a
more simplistic treatment of history’s inherent subjectivity than one would
wish to read from any decent Honours student. It adds nothing new, and
reads like those ‘introductions to postmodern history’ that were popular in
the early 1990s. Much the same thing could be said of the contributions
from Muriel Porter (‘Ian Breward: an Australasian life’), Roger Thompson
(‘Pastor Extraordinaire: A Portrait of Hector Harrison) and Allan Davidson’s
useful but straightforwardly bibliographical ‘New Zealand and Religious
Myopia’.

All of this may seem unduly harsh criticism. There is no doubt that the
intent of the volume was laudable and the justification for it beyond
question. Similarly, the fact that the editors were able to assemble a good
number of eminent Church historians from both countries testifies to
Breward’s standing. However, the reputation of Ian Breward’s own
scholarship – and indeed of the contributors – makes it all the more
surprising and disappointing that the overall quality of the book was not
consistently higher. While a number of the articles are fine pieces of work,
one is left with the unhappy impression that Breward himself deserved
better.
Mark Lindsay, Melbourne

1b) Myra Rutherdale, Women and the White Man’s God.
Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field.
Vancouver/Toronto: UBC Press. 2002. 224 pp. $29.95
paperback.

Myra Rutherdale’s account of missionaries in
Canada’s northern and north-west territories in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries enters new ground. Previously,
such writings were by men about men; instead she seeks to
present the women’s experience. Her interest is particularly in
women missionaries, or wives of missionaries, and in the various
accommodations they made as they encountered the strange
inhabitants, the harsh climate and the difficult living conditions
of the Canadian north.

To this end, she researched the experience of over 100
women members of the Church of England in Canada, primarily
because of the excellent state of the archives of the Dioceses of
Caledonia, the Yukon and the Arctic, as well as of the Church
Missionary Society.

This is old-style missionary history with a new twist. At
no point does Rutherdale attempt to trace the responses of the
Aboriginal people, which would have required an entirely
different approach.

Missionary expansion in the nineteenth century over
the vast unknown areas of northern and western Canada was part
and parcel of European penetration and colonization. These
English missionaries brought with them the panoply of
imperialist certainty, beneficence and racial superiority, as
exhibited throughout the British Empire.

But the actual experience of association with the
Aboriginal peoples was often in conflict with the preconceived
ideas of these strangers. So too social perceptions became altered
on the mission frontier, and gender roles changed, on what was
regarded as the northernmost outpost of the Empire. Over time
there were major changes in the way in which the religious
objectives overlapped with or conflicted with the Canadian
government’s aim of assimilating these exotic Aboriginal peoples
in a gigantic nation-building and colonialist endeavour.
Rutherdale seeks to recapture the largely overlooked role of
women in this process.

This is not an attempt to glorify or romanticize these
English or English-Canadian women for their often hard, even
heroic, lives. Rather Rutherdale reflects on the meaning of their
work and the significance of their relations with their charges.
She shows very clearly that the white women’s preconceptions
were modified or abandoned by their contacts both with the land
and the people. The result was a syncretism, blending missionary
assumptions and aboriginal insights, which eventually were to be
recognized as inherently valid. It was, Rutherdale claims, a
hybrid culture which lent complexity to the evolving missionary
experience.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the missionary task
was assumed to be man’s work. The image of a hearty masculine
outdoorsman bursting with evangelical zeal was much promoted
by the Church Missionary Society, Yet, despite early opposition,
the CMS came by the 1880s to recognize the value of women
missionaries. In fact, by the turn of the century, most Anglican
missionaries in northern Canada were women. Rutherdale
explores how this fact changed gender perceptions, as women
sought to gain credit for their contributions to the Anglican
missionary enterprise.

But white women, no less than white men, brought with
them the stereotypes of European superiority and Aboriginal
backwardness. The natives’ superstition and ignorance needed to
be replaced by the Christian gospel, while for many women
missionaries “cleanliness was next to Godliness”. Physical
squalor was often linked to spiritual or moral deficiency. All the
more need for Christian instruction.

Rutherdale is naturally critical of the imperialist
attitudes of the dominant discourse of missionary women, but
also draws attention to the increasing ambivalence expressed in
later years, which paved the way for the new relationships of
today.

Considering the limited number of missionary women
in the north, Rutherdale has compiled a remarkable treasure trove
from both public and private sources. Of course, the missionary
journals and appeals for funding, often written by or about these
women and their work, present a positive picture. But so do
private letters and journals. They depict clearly the prevailing
commitment to duty and service, and even the glamour of their
experiences. In most cases, Christianity, motherhood and
morality were inextricably mixed, as Rutherdale shows in her
various case studies.

At the same time, she places these experiences in their
wider, imperial setting, since these women’s attributes were
much the same “from Baffin’s icy margin to Afric’s sultry
shores”.

In retrospect, however, a less favourable judgment has to
be taken to the misguided policy of forcible assimilation of
aboriginal children in residential schools. Missionary women were
frequently involved in disciplinary measures, deeply and long
resented by the pupils. So too Rutherdale skirts around the
damage done by the dogmatic rigidities of these
earnest Evangelical women, whose eagerness for large-scale conversions to
their brand of English Christianity was constantly frustrated.

It took a long time for these missionaries to see that
the aboriginal people took only those elements they wanted from
Christianity and then blended them into their traditional cultures.
It took even longer to overcome the missionaries’ racialism and
paternalism or to accept aboriginal peoples as equals. In
Rutherdale’s view, “the transition from a remarkable intolerance
for things Aboriginal to one of accommodation is probably the
most interesting aspect of the history of Anglicanism in the
north”.

Certainly, she is right to suggest that the Aboriginal ministry has
been crucial to the survival of the Anglican church in northern
Canada. The verdict on its early history is still out.
Recently the Anglican Church officially decried the
misplaced benevolence of colonizers who tried too hard to
deliver the message of Christianity. But Rutherdale’s
vignettes of the lives of the women involved points to the
more fluid and conflicting dynamics between the servants
of the White Man’s God and the Aboriginal people. In fact
the relationships were often, on both sides, seen to be
helpful and creative. Her findings therefore help to
present a more positive picture of the past than has recently
been propagated in the wider Canadian society.
JSC

c) Michael F.Feldkamp, Goldhagens unwillige Kirche. Alte und neue
Fälschungen über Kirche und Papst während der NS-Herrschaft.
Munich: Olzog, 2003. 178 pp ISBN 3-7892-8127-1

Michael Feldkamp has undertaken the thankless task of refuting the
numerous falsifications of history which have appeared in a recent series of
books dealing with Pope Pius XII, the Vatican and the Catholic Church,
culminating in Daniel Goldhagen’s A Moral Reckoning. The Role of the
Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its unfulfilled Duty of Repair, which
was published at the end of 2002. Much of this genre of writing arises
from some prior political or ideological interest, which then uses, or
misuses, history for its purposes. Nevertheless, in Feldkamp’s view, if these
distortions remained uncorrected, they could come to be accepted as
accurate versions of the truth, and poison the atmosphere for years. Hence
his involvement. His qualifications to do so are based on his own
researches and his two books on the topic. He is now a research historian
employed by the German Parliament in Berlin.

Attacks on the character and policies of Pope Pius XII began already
in the war years, principally by communist authors. But the criticism
became much more vocal a few years after Pius’ death in 1958. A young
Swiss German playwright produced a striking play The Deputy, castigating
the Pope for his alleged failure to support the Jewish victims of the Nazi
Holocaust. Almost all subsequent critiques follow the same line as
Hochhuth, and there is a great deal of recapitulation, and even direct
overlap from one critical author to another. But as Feldkamp rightly points
out, lies don’t become truth just by being frequently repeated (p.24).

As a result of Hochhuth’s attack, the Vatican authorized the
publication of a lengthy series of 11 documentary volumes for the war
years, reproducing the telegrams and memoranda between the Vatican and
its various diplomatic representatives around the world. Despite this
unprecedented move, critics still demanded more. They accused the papal
authorities of suppressing or not publishing evidence which would reveal
the Vatican’s policies to be deficient. They demanded that the archives be
opened to all comers, even though the material had still to be properly
catalogued. In the 1990s these charges were again advanced, and resulted
in a new move by the Vatican, designed to be conciliatory. They appointed
a joint Catholic-Jewish Commission to look at the published volumes again,
and to see how best their findings could be more widely spread. But the
result was only to encourage renewed demands for the archives to be fully
open so that nothing could remain hidden or suppressed.

All these stages are well described by Feldkamp. Despite the
discreditable behaviour of the above-mentioned Commission, the Vatican
yielded by opening the archival holdings of part of the controversial
aspects, i.e. those covering its relations with Germany from 1922 up to
1939, when Eugenio Pacelli was first Nuncio in Germany and then Cardinal
Secretary of State. Feldkamp does not expect these papers to reveal much
that is new, though they will fill in the details of already published
accounts. But at the same time they are unlikely to put a stop to the
kind of unbridled criticisms by such authors as Goldhagen.

Feldkamp’s analysis of Goldhagen’s new book can be described as a
hatchet job. He points out the frequency with which Goldhagen indulges in
sweeping generalizations, rehearses stereotypical anti-Catholic prejudices,
relies for his information solely upon authors who agree with his thesis, and
dismisses as irrelevant evidence to the contrary. His determination to
defame Pius XII’s actual conduct of affairs, and to claim a moral superiority
for his own version of how events should have happened, is a characteristic
fault noted by others as well as Feldkamp. Numerous examples are here
provided of Goldhagen’s manipulation of facts and opinions, such as his
allegation that “Catholic antisemitism hardly differed in its demonization of
the Jews from that of the Nazis”, or his claim that the “silence” of Pius XII
was a principal cause for the mass extermination of the Jews. And
Feldkamp naturally pounces on the mistake in one of the book’s
photographs, wrongly identifying a German cardinal, which he sees a proof
of Goldhagen’s incompetence and maliciousness. In short, in Feldkamp’s
view, he is not a serious historian at all.

Nor, finally, can much be said in favour of Goldhagen’s
theologizing. His attempts, for example, to prove the constancy of
Christian antisemitism, or his demand that the Catholic Church should now
undertake a massive course of reparations, starting with the excision from
the New Testament of all antisemitic references, are hardly scholarly. For,
as Feldkamp notes, his exegetical skills are as meagre as his historical.
Equally to be regretted are Goldhagen’s denigratory comments on the more
recent developments in Christian-Jewish relations as undertaken by the
Vatican over the last forty years. The only reason for this book’s flagrant
publicity would seem to be the publisher’s belief that a polemical assault on
the Catholic Church would sell well. Luckily this seems to have been a
miscalculation ˆ to the satisfaction of such as Feldkamp, whose desire is for
an objective and accurate treatment of the subject, rather than this rehashed
and superficial account as provided by Goldhagen.
JSC

d) Perica, Vjekoslav. Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav
States, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Vjekoslav Perica’s masterfully written and extensively researched book fills
a important gap in the historical scholarship on the twentieth century
southeastern Europe. By carefully examining and defining the political role
and influence of religion, the author argues that none of the main ethnic
religions, the Serbian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic “Church of the Croat
People,” or the Yugoslav Islamic community, ever fully endorsed the idea
of multiconfessional and multiethnic Yugoslav state. For Perica Yugoslavia
did not implode and disintegrate into a bloody civil war in the early 1990s
solely because of the deep seated nationalistic intolerances or because of a
clash of civilizations. Powerful ethnoclericalism prevented full
legitimization of both the inter-war Yugoslav monarchy and of the post-war
socialist Yugoslavia. The politically active clergy fused religious
intolerance with nationalistic animosity to create “ethnic churches” in form
and nationalistic parties in substance. The clergy departed from their
original purpose and became hypernationalistic, antiliberal, and antisecular
leaders who lacked the accountability of their secular counterparts. Perica
skillfully differentiates between the idols the religious establishments
disseminated from the secular ones the socialist regime imposed and
suggests that the civil religion of Titoist “brotherhood and unity” was a far
better solution for the South Slav complex landscape: “nothing better than
Titoism has been seen in this part of the world” (226). Perica correctly
concludes that the Myth of the Three Evils of the Twentieth Century,
namely Nazism, fascism, and communism, is an imbalanced
oversimplification that could not explain the complexities of the Yugoslav
case.
J.Mocnik, Bowling Green, Ohio

2) Book notes:

Hew Strachan, The First World War. Volume 1:To arms,
Oxford University Press 2001. This vast and compendious history seeks to
present a comprehensive picture of all sides of this conflict in its
multifarious aspects.

Of interest to readers of this Newsletter will be the concluding chapter on
“The Ideas of 1914”. Here the role of the churches in assisting the
transition from a local territorial squabble to a “war to end all wars” is
mentioned. Just some quotes: “The destruction and hatred which the war
unleashed seemed, to Ernst Troeltsch, to make Christianity itself an alien
message from an alien world. . . .Church-State relations in many of the
belligerent countries were increasingly fraught. Societies had become
sufficiently secularized in their pursuit of material progress for church
leaders to be tempted to see the war’s advent as divine retribution. For
them, the war could be welcomed as a necessary and God-given process of
cleansing and rejuvenation..

Paradoxically, therefore, optimism trod hard on the heels of pessimism. The
response of many on mobilization was to turn to religion for guidance and
comfort.. . . Much of the rhetoric of holy war delivered from the pulpits of
Europe in 1914 opted to regard the war as a punishment of God’s chosen
people’s foes, . . .which, in turn led to the identification of church with
state.. . . Cardinal Mercier of Belgium, for instance, in his Christmas 1914
message told his flock that “The religion of Christ makes patriotism a law:
there is no perfect Christian who is not a perfect patriot. . . . Joan of
Arc and Martin Luther were recruited a suitable models for strengthening
nationalist sentiments amongst Christians. . . . In Germany, the fusion of
Evangelicalism and propaganda. . .helped redefine the church’s mission in
political and cultural as well as religious terms. The result was a new
theology. The war enabled orthodox Lutherans and liberal theologians to
converge. Both saw victory as the means to the application of the kingdom
of God within an ethical community; Protestantism could be confirmed as
the religious bedrock of the German cultural state. . . . God, therefore,
became an active participant in the historical process. As the Court
Preacher Ernst Dryander said on August 4th: “We march to the fight for our
culture against unculture, for German morality against barbarity, for the
free, German, God-fearing person against the instincts of the uncontrolled
mass. . .We know we fight not only for our existence but also for the
existence of the most holy of possessions we have to perpetuate”.
It is to be hoped that Strachan, in his subsequent volumes, will take up the
question of how Europe’s churches had later to come to terms with such
disastrous pronouncements.
JSC

3) Articles:

James McNutt, Adolf Schlatter and the Jews, in German
Studies Review, Vol. XXVI, no. 2, May 2003, pp. 353 ff.
Adolf Schlatter was a very distinguished New Testament scholar in
the first thirty years of the 20th century at Tubingen University. He upheld a
conservative orthodoxy, but was also affected by the ideas of the movement
for volkisch theology. McNutt’s fine evaluation of his writings about
Judaism shows how much Schlatter could draw from the New Testament a
pejorative view of Jews, as legalistic and/or materialist opponents of the
Saviour Christ. In his opinion, a true spiritual life in Christ could
easily lend itself to the belief that the Jew was the enemy of the true German spirit.

While Schlatter openly opposed the Nazi heresies of race and blood, or the
Fuhrerprinzip, his influence nonetheless was considerable in the more
pietistic circles, especially in Württemberg. McNutt could have made more
of the fact that such theologians effectively prevented the possibility of any
philosemitic attitudes arising in the German Protestant churches. They had
no prophylactics against the Nazis’ virulent antisemitic prejudices, amply
watered by suitable quotations from Luther. McNutt rightly assesses
Schlatter as an effective conduit for such inflammatory perceptions of Jews
in Germany.
JSC

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

Dear Friends,
A thought for today’s distress:

Recently a chapel in Oxford Cathedral was dedicated to Bishop George Bell
of Chichester 1929-58, who was tireless in his efforts to promote the cause
of peace, justice and ecumenical friendship. In the floor in front of
the altar, a stone slab bears a quotation from his writings:
„No nation, no church, no individual is guiltless.
Without repentance, without forgiveness,
There can be no regeneration”

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) C. Brown, The death of Christian Britain
b) Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium
c) Alvarez, Espionage in the Vatican

2) Book notes:

Joly, Xavier Vallat
Lepp and Nowak, Evangelische Kirche
Palm, Evangelische Kirchentag
Bergen, War and Genocide

3) Recent Articles

4) Research outline – Schoerner, The Myron Taylor Mission

5) New Religious Freedom News Service

1) Book reviews:

a) Callum G.Brown, The death of Christian Britain, London and New York:
Routledge 2001 256 pp.

The provocative title of this study by a senior scholar of Strathclyde
University in Glasgow is bound to cause great controversy, not only for his
sweeping assertions but also for his daring hypotheses. But his intention
is not epater le bourgeois with his challenging conclusion: “The culture
of Christianity has gone in the Britain of the new millennium. Britain is
showing the world how religion as we have known it can die”. Rather his
aim is to dispute the prevailing theories about the process of
secularization as they have developed and dominated discussion for over a
century. To this task he brings a striking vision based on wide research in
conditions of English and Scottish popular religion.

Secularization, as is widely believed in many quarters, began with the
Enlightenment and the growth of rationality. It sought to liberate mankind
from the churches‚ political, social and mental control, by refuting
superstition and unverifiable dogmas, by liberating morality from the
clutches of the clergy, and by offering the prospect of humanistic growth
and progress. For most of the champions of this view, this was a
teleological irreversible process – an end much to be desired.
On the other side, those who deplored what they saw as the falling away
from the faith practices of earlier generations were apt to lay the blame
on the insidious impact of modernization. In their nostalgia, they
envisaged a rural church-going Britain of villages, each with its own
historic parish church, a stable and God-fearing society. The rise of
industrialization, the building of dark satanic mills, and the consequent
evils of urbanization, are held to be the root causes of the regrettable
secularizing effects ever since.

Callum Brown disputes both these views. Instead, he contends that Britain
between 1800 and 1960 was a highly religious nation. This period can be
seen as the nation’s last puritan age, when the majority of the population
voluntarily accepted a strict Christian moral code, drawn from the
teachings of evangelicalism in both its English and Scottish varieties.
This kind of Christianity formed the identity of individual men and women
of all classes. The central chapters of this study examine the nature of
this discourse, particularly in the nineteenth century from literary
sources, and in the twentieth from oral testimonies. In sum, Callum Brown
seeks to show that the nineteenth century saw the greatest and most
successful exercise in Christian proselytizing Britain had ever seen.

De-Christianization, he claims, took place much later and much more
rapidly than previously asserted. Only in the last fifty years has this
decline in religiosity become paramount, but its impact has been far more
influential than has been acknowledged so far. Today a vast chasm
separates us from the world of the 1950s, which Callum Brown believes was
the last high point when religion mattered deeply in British society. But
it stopped mattering in the 1960s, when a sudden plunge took place,
reflected in all pertinent religious statistics. As a sociologist, Callum
Brown is at home with the use of statistics, which are fortunately here
used only sparingly, but at the same time is well aware of the pitfalls
which arise in attempting to quantify such a subjective subject as
religious loyalties and beliefs. But he is not so much interested in
charting the decline of the Christian institutions over the past fifty
years as in the significant loss of the Christian perspective, which had
formed the mental and moral world of the population in earlier centuries.

It is the disappearance in the last few decades of the Christian, and more
centrally the Evangelical, discourse which Brown sees as the crucial
turning point, after which the vast majority of Britons no longer drew
their sense of identity from this particular religious heritage.

No less challenging are the principal reasons Brown finds to be
responsible. Instead of picking on the alienation of the working classes,
or the defection of the intellectuals, Brown suggests that the crucial
factor was the breach in the relationship between women and Christian piety
in the 1960s, which caused secularization. This startling and novel
hypothesis is based on the premise that the long-standing evangelical
discourse, especially in the nineteenth century, prioritized the piety of
women, leading to the wave of feminisation of the churches, and the
attendant habits of public morality. Its success after 1800 set up the
pattern of religiosity (and respectability) for a hundred and fifty years.
But it was to be overthrown when the younger women of the decade of the
1960s repudiated this categorization of their social identity. Aided and
abetted by their partners, this was the decade when major attacks were
launched against the traditional British morality. The 1960s saw the ending
of moral censorship of literature, the legalizing of homosexuality and
abortion, the granting of easier divorce and the emergence of the women’s
liberation movements. Structural “realities” of social class eroded.
Self-evident “truths” were abandoned. Pop culture produced new “deities”.
The mass cultural discourse changed radically.

The immediate victim was Christianity, challenged most influentially by
the re-crafting of femininity. Indeed, Brown emphasizes, the central
feature was what he calls the simultaneous de-feminization of piety and the
de-pietization of femininity. Feminine rebellion against their
traditional roles gave rise not only to a wholly new consciousness of
male-female relationships but also a large-scale abandonment of the female
relationship to God. This led not just to a collision with the churches
but with Christianity as a whole. It effectively brought to an end a
whole century of endeavour by what Brown calls the salvation industry. And
it has produced a whole generation deprived of the cultural discourse which
formed the identity of their forebears. Brown does not undertake to
suggest what might replace this lost Christian heritage, but notes the
inarticulate character of the current generation’s response to “spiritual”
matters. In place of the Christian tradition we now have a pluralistic,
incoherent co-existence of multiple views, whether for better or worse.

The search for personal faith is now in the “New Age” of cults, personal
development and consumer choice. But, in Brown‚s view, the universal
world-view of Christianity which shaped so many British identities before
1950 seemed impossible to recreate. British culture is now pioneering new
discursive territory. British Christianity is effectively dead, even if the
wishful thinking of surviving church members keeps the skeleton alive for a
few more years.

Callum Brown does not attempt to put his findings in any wider context,
though many of his arguments could be applied, say, to Germany. He notes
that a discursive conflict is still underway in North America, but
completely excludes Ireland, which is certainly an exceptional case. But
questions still arise about his analysis of the British mainland scene.
First and foremost, despite his obvious acquaintance with the religious
heritage of evangelicalism, his arguments for its demise seem
short-circuited, or even one-sided. Larger trends in twentieth century
history than the status of feminine piety surely need to be considered. No
mention at all was made of the disastrous crisis of credibility caused by
the two world wars, especially the first. In the opinion of this reviewer,
the symptoms here so clearly enunciated were the fruit of a deeper
undermining of the faith content in all European Christianity, which can be
dated to 1914-1918. But it would require another book to substantiate such
a claim. In the meantime Callum Brown’s stimulating and forceful account
will provoke much debate and argument, which was presumably his purpose.
JSC

b) Heike Kreutzer, Das Reichskirchenministerium im Gefüge der
nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag. 2000
390pp. ISBN 3-7700-1610-6
(This review first appeared in German History, Vol. 20 No 3, October 2002)

The Ministry of Church Affairs established by Hitler in 1935 was a
desperate measure designed to bring the churches into line with Nazi
policies. It was doomed to failure throughout its short existence. Not
only did the churches resent the re-imposition of state control, after this
had been abolished in 1919, but even more strikingly the Nazi hierarchy was
split over the whole project, and effectively sabotaged the plans of the
one and only Minister, Hanns Kerrl.

Heike Kreutzer is the first scholar to undertake a complete research of the
records of this Ministry, which for decades were held by the authorities in
East Germany and inaccessible to most western scholars. Now that the
archives have been reunited, a full picture can be obtained. The story is
a regrettable piece of chicanery. But Kreutzer ably elucidates the main
lines of why the Ministry was established, how the hapless and outgunned
figure of Kerrl attempted to gain political momentum, and his successive
failures. She is also good at documenting the intrigues of the anti-Kerrl
factions, which carried much more weight in the notoriously feuding
structures of the Nazi government. She therefore sees the fate of this
Ministry as part of the “authoritarian anarchy” which characterized the
Nazi regime.

In 1933 Hitler hoped that the churches would enthusiastically join in his
attempt to remodel German society. But institutionally, the church
leaders clung to their autonomy, and blocked the dynamic momentum of the
Nazi ideology. In this situation, the Nazis‚ failure to develop a
coherent church policy became apparent. To be sure, its radical wing,
including Hitler, instinctively repudiated both Christianity and its
institutions. But other Nazis, like Kerrl, were still inclined to mobilize
the national sympathies of churchmen and therefore saw the usefulness of
church structures for the Party‚s goals. The initial attempt to align the
Protestant churches with the Nazi wishes, through the appointment of the
newly installed Reich Bishop, Ludwig Müller, was counter-productive. So
too the Catholics, despite the Concordat, opposed the attacks on their
milieu. Setting up this new Ministry was supposed to lead to a coherent
policy, but in fact satisfied no one.

Kerrl’s naively pietistic view that National Socialism was identical
with true Christianity, or that Jesus wasn’t really a Jew, only led to
ridicule from his more powerful rivals, Bormann, Rosenberg or Goebbels.
Indeed the latter rightly noted that “Kerrl wants to preserve the churches,
we want to liquidate them”. With colleagues such as this, it was not
surprising that Kerrl never gained weight in the Party, nor Hitler’s
backing. In any case the Ministry was too small and too new to carry
influence, despite all of Kerrl‚s bravado. Frustration and resignation
marked his period in office. Perhaps luckily, before his internal opponents
could eliminate him politically, Kerrl died in December 1941, and was given
a grandiose Nazi funeral.

Kreutzer’s last two chapters deal respectively with the policies adopted
towards the Catholic and Protestant churches, and form the meat of this
study. In 1933 Hitler signed the Concordat with the Vatican for the sake
of the international prestige involved. But Nazi radicals resented the
legal constraints on their totalitarian ambitions. The head of the Catholic
section of Kerrl’s ministry, an ex-priest Joseph Roth, whose hatred of his
former associates now led him to champion the Concordat‚s annulment,
abetted them. Despite a number of attempts, in the end Hitler, for a
variety of reasons, drew back and left the situation unresolved. So too,
Kerrl’s policy towards the Protestant churches ended in failure. His
initial display of goodwill by building a coalition of moderate elements
was undermined both by the Nazi extremists and by the suspicions of the
more stringently dogmatic Confessing Church about the Party‚s intentions.
Neither of these groups accepted Kerrl’s view that Christianity and Nazism
could be combined in harmony. Kerrl never possessed the influence or the
power to resolve this dilemma. In February 1937 his policy was openly
sabotaged when Hitler intervened to order new church elections – which in
fact never took place. By the end of the year, Hitler abandoned all
attempts to bring the churches into line, and in fact never officially met
with Kerrl again. When he died, Kerrl’s policy was in ruins.

Heike Kreutzer thus provides the archival evidence for an analysis whose
main lines were already well known. For reasons of length, she refrained
from including any documents from church archives, which would have shown
their reactions to the contradictory and convoluted policies of the Church
Ministry. But her achievement is to show clearly enough the malevolence of
the Nazis‚ attempt to impose their will on the German churches. Sad to
say, very much the same policy was adopted by the Communists in the German
Democratic Republic after 1949, with equal lack of success. But that is
another story.
J S.C.

c) David Alvarez, Spies in the Vatican. Espionage and Intrigue from
Napoleon to the Holocaust. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas.
2002. 341pp

Some years ago David Alvarez assisted Fr. Robert Graham in writing a book
on the Nazi agents who tried to infiltrate the Vatican bureaucracy at the
height of the Second World War. His researches led him on to investigate
the subject over a longer period, and to look at how the Vatican‚s
operations became an object of espionage and intrigue over the past two
centuries. At the same time, he also looks at the kind of responses the
papal officials endeavoured to put in place to thwart such unwelcome
activities, as well as to provide successive Popes with their own body of
intelligence.

Up to 1870 the Papacy exercised territorial sovereignty over large parts
of Italy. It was therefore suspect to other powers, such as France and
Austria, whose agents often successfully intercepted the Pope‚s mail or
waylaid his messengers for their own ends. When the newly established
Kingdom of Italy conquered the Papal States, the Pope refused to recognize
his defeat, and broke off relations. Consequently, the Italian
government could only resort to clandestine means of keeping tabs on this
enemy, and built up a large network of informers in the now tiny state. By
the end of the nineteenth century, the Vatican’s international standing had
sunk very low and consequently it was regarded as hardly significant by
other powers.

But, in 1914, both sides in the Great War began to recognize the potential
value of having Papal moral support. They sought to find out more about
the Vatican’s policies and priorities, sometimes legally through accredited
diplomats, sometimes illegally by reading the Papal ciphers – which alas!
were shockingly primitive. Benedict XV was the first Pope to realize that
espousing the cause of peace could enhance papal influence. His successor,
Pius XI, similarly added prestige by abandoning the Vatican’s territorial
claims and relied solely on the weapons of the spirit. But anti-clericals
continued to be hostile, suspecting that the Pope had spies in every
Catholic parish, linked in a vast international network. Alternatively they
could believe that political conspiracy was one of the sacraments of the
Catholic Church. Others were dismissive: – “how many divisions has the
Pope?”

But, in effect, by the time of the Second World War, many nations were
sufficiently concerned to try and find out what the Pope was up to. It was
not only the Nazis who kept a close watch, or deciphered the papal
dispatches. Alvarez spells out the various stratagems adopted by a number
of interested powers and has researched widely in the intelligence files in
Paris, Rome, Madrid, London and Washington. He successfully captures the
atmosphere of rumours and intrigue which prevailed at the Holy See – in
part because it was so small and intimate that foreign diplomats and
journalists had very little to do but speculate. Covert political
warfare and disinformation were common hazards. The Vatican authorities
were obliged to spend far too much of their time setting things right or
issuing denials of far-fetched allegations.

For its part, it was only after the Vatican established professional
courses for training its own diplomats that it could be in a position to
carry out its worldwide political missions with success. The future Pope
Pius XII was one of the more prominent of these first recruits. But even
when he ascended the papal throne in 1939, the Holy See’s diplomatic corps
was tiny, and not all of its appointments were a success, as
Pacelli’s successor in Berlin, Cesare Orsenigo, demonstrated.

The Vatican itself was not above covert operations designed to advance the
Catholic cause. But the clandestine moves undertaken, for example, in the
Soviet Union in the 1920s, in an attempt to ordain secret bishops, were
singularly inept and led to total failure. The more recent example of
China would seem to have fared no better. Relations with these hostile
dictatorships varied between fervent and outright denunciations on the one
hand, and attempts to work out a modus vivendi on the other. Since these
aims contradicted each other, success was very limited, as Alvarez shows.
Even after the 1929 Lateran agreements between the Vatican and Italy had
restored some normality in their relations, Mussolini’s agents still kept
the papal retinue under surveillance, mainly through junior officials or
“loyal” Catholics who could be suborned. Journalists were easily bribable
– and some of them were priests. At the same time, the Vatican’s
telephones were regularly tapped. An Italian spy was smuggled into the
Secretariat of State. After 1933, the Nazis also sought to mount their own
intelligence leads in to the Vatican, led by a renegade priest Albert
Hartl. Here Alvarez recapitulates his earlier work, covering too the
debatable moves when the Pope assisted members of the German resistance
movement by passing on – very cautiously – their messages to the British
government. These moves became known to the Nazi hierarchy, and elaborate
measures had to be taken to divert their suspicions. Alvarez most
successfully conveys the whole cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of those years.
He also does not fail to point out that the Vatican authorities were never
very security conscious, and that they had neither the resources nor the
appetite for serious counter-espionage. Despite this rather obvious fact,
many powers, including the United States, continued to believe that the
Vatican housed a treasure trove of political, economic, and military
secrets assiduously collected and transmitted to Rome by faithful Catholics
around the globe.

Alvarez thus does us a useful service in debunking most of the myths about
“papal power”, and in describing the failure of most efforts to reveal the
Vatican’s alleged “secrets”. Of course, it was not his aim to analyze the
actual policies pursued by Pope Pius XII. Instead he exposes the vast array
of misinformation invented by agents starved of real news, but busy
peddling rumours to gullible governments, trying to penetrate the closed
secretive world of the Holy See. In reality, the papal intelligence
activities were very limited, and fell far short of the fantasies of the
often hostile web-spinners. The Secretariat of State and most nunciatures
were understaffed and highly conservative in their modes of operation. The
officials were often ill informed about world affairs. The worldwide clergy
were never mobilized to provide political intelligence. The Vatican’s
communications were regularly deciphered or intercepted.

Alvarez builds a good case for minimizing the Vatican‚s intelligence
achievements in the age of the dictators. But he omits perhaps the most
inhibiting circumstance, especially towards the end of the war. This was
the sense of impending disaster, as the Europe so beloved by the Popes was
bombed to bits by weapons of mass destruction. The claustrophobia suffered
by the Vatican and its impotence to bring about a cessation of hostilities
were even more significant. Even if the Vatican had had the espionage
network its enemies assumed, these factors could not have been overcome.
Alvarez’s survey concludes with the correct observation that the Vatican
never had the resources to match the intelligence activities of other
powers. It sought to protect its interests and to project its influence as
best it could with inadequate means. This still remains the Vatican’s
unresolved dilemma.
JSC

2) Book notes:

a) Laurent Joly, Xavier Vallat. De nationalisme chretien a
l‚antisemitisme d‚Etat. Paris: Grasset 2001. 466pp

Xavier Vallat is known to history as the Commissioner General for the
Jewish Question in Marshal Petain‚s Vichy Government. He became notorious
as the architect of what his biographer calls „the most elaborate and the
severest series of regulations in Europe‰ directed against the Jews. His
antisemitism was not, however, a copy of Nazi racial hatred. Rather, it was
formed by a mixture of Catholic prejudice, anti-communism, anti-Free
Masonry, and xenophobia. The Jews, Vallat believed, incorporated these
perils and had to be kept under control. Only those Jews prepared to be
fully integrated to French national values could be exempted. As a
politician of the extreme right, a militant Catholic, and a leader of World
War veterans, Vallat welcomed the Vichy regime as a means of putting France
back on the right track. But his fanaticism proved too much and he was
dismissed in May 1942, i.e. before his successor collaborated in sending
deportation trains from Paris to Auschwitz. But Vallat certainly prepared
the way for most of the foreign Jews in France to lose their lives. Laurent
Joly seeks to explain why in this fully researched biography.
JSC

b) C.Lepp and K.Nowak eds., Evangelische Kirche im geteilten Deutschland
(1945-1989/90), Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht 2001 346pp

Claudia Lepp and Kurt Nowak have edited a useful introductory survey of
the history of the German Evangelical Church between 1945 and 1989/90.
Several well-known scholars have contributed their perspectives around the
central question: can the history of this church be described as being of
one piece, or did the separate paths between the western Bonn Republic and
the German Democratic Republic mean that in fact two separate churches
existed which require different treatments. The contributors deny this, but
admit the complexity of trying to maintain a unified historiography. The
difficulties are spelt out in one of the essays, which points out that the
overthrow of the communist regime led to similar conditions as had happened
with the defeat of the Nazi regime in 1945, when the necessary purgation of
the church was accompanied with moralistic judgments, based often on highly
problematic source material. Particularly the use of the former Stasi
(secret police) materials raises major issues for historians.

c) Dirk Palm, “Wir sind doch Bruder!”. Der evangelische Kirchentag und die
deutsche Frage 1949-1961, (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte. Reihe
B:Darstellungen, Bd 36) Gottingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht. 2002 360 pp

The latest in the prestigious series of scholarly treatments published by
the official church history office of the German Evangelical Church deals
with the story of possibly the most successful experiment in church life
since 1945. Inspired by several notable laymen in the desolate aftermath
of the Nazi era, this plan was to organize large-scale church rallies which
would serve three purposes: first, to provide a meeting ground for the
informed laity to become better acquainted with their faith; second, a
vehicle for expressing the Church’s desire for national unity, despite the
political divisions; and thirdly, to act as a rallying ground for
Protestants to show the flag. The second of these themes is taken up by
Dirk Palm to show how these biennial rallies – which still continue –
served the purpose of holding on to the idea of German unity, even though
the politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain made things difficult.

d) Doris L.Bergen, War and Genocide: a concise history of the Holocaust,
Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield. 2002. xi+ 263 pp. ISBN
0-8476-9630-8 USD $ 24.95.

Doris Bergen is well-known to our readers as a frequent and welcome
contributor, and also as the author of the fine study of the pro-Nazi wing
in the German Evangelical Church, The Twisted Cross. She has now put us
all in debt for this introductory primer on the history of the Holocaust,
which will be particularly valuable for undergraduates, who need to study
the background and causal factors behind the launching of this most
terrible piece of mass murder. Bergen‚s achievement is to show how these
killings were related to the rest of the German war effort in its pursuit
of so-called racial purification and territorial expansion. She therefore
includes the story of the other earlier victims of Nazi ferocity, the
mentally-handicapped, the Roma or gypsies, the Polish and Soviet civilian
populations, especially intellectuals, as well as smaller groups such as
Jehovah‚s witnesses, or homosexuals. These all fall under her scrutiny as
suffering from the state-sponsored programs of violence and atrocity
function. Her chapters are in fact related to the teaching needs of
students, who will find their questions carefully addressed, along with
useful list of sources, and suggestions for further reading. Her
photographs help to focus attention to the fact that these mass murders
happened to real people. Luckily such books as this will help to ensure
that such terrifying violence is not forgotten, or regarded as merely a
long-past historical event.

3) Recent Articles

a) Gary Bullen,, Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian
Century in Journal of Church and State, Vol. 44, no.2, spring 2002.

This article outlines the debate within American Christian pacifist circles
during the 1930s, when Niebuhr increasingly took a “realistic” line, while
the editors of the Christian Century advocated abstention from war up to
the very last minute, accusing Roosevelt of war-mongering. The arguments
have hardly changed in the intervening 70 years.

b) Michael Casey, From religious Outsider to Insider. The rise and fall of
pacifism in the Churches of Christ in Journal of Church and State, Vol.
44, no.3, summer 2002.

A companion piece about this small sect in the
southern states of the USA. Originally social outcasts with strongly
apocalyptic views, they have now joined the mainstream, which their
forebears loathed. Their early primitive pacifism has been replaced by
patriotic urgings to support America’s holy wars.

c) Michael Phayer, Pius XII and the Genocides of Polish Catholics and
Polish Jews during the Second World War, in Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte,
Vol.15, 2002, no 1.

This article explains the motivations of the Vatican‚s response to the
atrocities committed in Poland by the Nazis. Although limited only to the
Catholic church, Phayer ably describes the dilemmas faced by Pope Pius XII,
as well as the demonic determination of the German attempt to root out the
church‚s place in Polish life, in conjunction with the similar
determination to exterminate the whole Jewish race. Only the failure of the
campaign against Russia forced the postponement of the forcible
extermination of the rest of the Polish population, which instead was
obliged to take up forced labour. In the aftermath, Phayer suggests that
the Vatican played down the German crimes in Poland in the interests of
post-war reconciliation and reconstruction.

4) Research project by Alexander Schoener, M.A., Catholic University of
Eichstaett, Germany Myron Taylor’s Mission to the Vatican 1940-1950

Myron C.Taylor, former Chief Executive of U.S.-Steel, and then special
envoy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Evian Conference on
Refugees in 1938, was appointed the President’s “Personal Representative”
to Pope Pius XII at Christmas time 1939. Taylor took office in January 1940
and also continued his mission under the Truman administration until he
resigned in January 1950. Taylor’s appointment was a substitute for
establishing diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Vatican,
suspended since 1867. Because of widespread anti-Catholicism in the United
States, this decision was hotly debated among the American public.
The main goal of this dissertation project will be an overall appreciation
of Taylor and his special diplomatic mission, in order to exemplify the
basic structures, problems, objectives and priorities of both the Vatican’s
and the United States‚ foreign policy and diplomacy during the Second World
War and the immediate post-war years.

First of all, the general background and the developments leading up to
Taylor’s appointment will be analyzed. Then, one has to ask what exactly
both sides expected from this mission, how these expectations changed in
the course of the years, and finally to what extent these were fulfilled.
Another crucial question will be how much importance the American
government assigned to Taylor’s reports. i.e. what their actual impact on
the formulation of the “greater lines” of U.S. foreign policy during these
years really was. The Vatican – like the other neutral states – was
widely seen as a “listening- post” at that time, also by the American
government and intelligence services. It will be interesting to see what
kind of information Taylor and his assistants passed on to their
government, especially if there were any contacts with members of the
German resistance through this channel, and also to what extent Taylor
communicated to his superiors news of the fate of the European Jews living
– and dying – under German occupation.

A comprehensive history of the Taylor mission using all available
documentary material is still a desideratum. Particularly Taylor‚s post-war
activities have hardly been analyzed up to now. Also to be explored more
fully are some important factors like Taylor‚s personality, the way he
perceived his mission, how American government and State Department
officials, as well as Vatican dignitaries and other diplomats accredited to
the Vatican judged him, his work and influence.

5) New Religious Freedom News Service

In the past few years there has been evidence that attacks against freedom
of religion have been increasing. Forum 18 News Service is a Christian web
and e-mail initiative to report on threats and actions against the
religious freedom of all people, regardless of their religious affiliation,
in an objective, truthful and timely manner.

Forum 18 is an Oslo, Norway based group committed to religious freedom for
all on the basis of Article 18 of the Declaration of Human Rights. F18News
will initially report on countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe, but will expand to cover other areas where Forum 18 considers there
is a need for good reporting and where commentary of the highest
professional standards can be provided.
Subscribe via Forum 18 http:// www.forum18.org

Best wishes for the summer holidays – for those in the northern hemisphere!
John S.Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Colleagues,
John Conway is on holiday this month, so he has asked me
to take over this month’s Newsletter. I am very happy to do so, and
therefore take the opportunity to send you an essay on the significant topic of
Christian-Jewish relations as they developed in Germany in the immediate
postwar period. I should be glad to have any comments you may care to send
me to the following address: mhockeno@skidmore.edu
Please ensure that you do NOT press the Reply button to
this message.

Sincerely,
Matthew Hockenos, Dept. of History, Skidmore College,
Saratoga Springs, New
York, USA
The German Protestant Church and its Mission to the Jews after the
Holocaust
Matthew D. Hockenos

Since completing a book-length study on the German
Protestant churches from 1945 to 1950, I have turned my attention to the fate the
Protestant Church’s mission to the Jews (Judenmission) after the Holocaust.
How did the Holocaust and the founding of Israel three years after the end of
WWII affect the church’s long-held belief that it was the duty of Protestant
pastors and church leaders to preach the word of Jesus Christ to Jews
with the intention of converting them to Christianity? What was the nature of
the discussions and debates over the church’s theory of supersessionism?
Did Protestant pastors and laypersons, who staffed the mission offices in
German cities, change their procedures for interacting with Jews who
remained in Germany after the war?

A number of reputable scholars including Paul Aring,
Micha Brumlik, Paul van Buren, John Conway, Eva Fleischner, Wolfgang Gerlach,
Richard Gutteridge, Charlotte Klein, Heinz Kremers, Christoph M. Raisig, Rolf
Rendtorff, and Martin Stöhr have addressed one or more of these
questions in their books and articles. But my aim is to explore Protestant-Jewish
relations after the war in a wider context. On the one hand I examine the
scholarly debates within the Protestant Church and between Protestant theologians
and Jewish scholars over the missions. On the other hand, I investigate the
activities of local missionaries in German cities who sought to convert Jews
to Christianity in the postwar years. And I also seek to include some
assessment, however limited, of these endeavors from the Jewish side. My
working thesis is that although the majority of Protestant church leaders and
theologians gradually came to the conclusion that Jews did not need Jesus Christ
since God’s covenant with the Jews remained in force, there remained
and still remains a minority of church leaders and local pastors who refuse to
denounce unequivocally the practice of missionizing Jews in
Germany and continue to seek the conversion of Jews by subtler means. Although
this latter group is a minority, they are not without influence.

Below is a revised and abridged version of a paper I
presented at the German Studies Association’s San Diego meeting in October 2002.
I welcome comments and criticisms. Since this is a work-in-progress, which I
intend to expand into an article or an even longer study, I ask that you do not
quote or reproduce any portion of the text without my permission.

In April 1950, when representatives of therecently-reconstituted Evangelical
(Protestant) Church in Germany assembled from all parts
of the country in their legislative body or Synod in the Berlin suburb of
Weissensee, they officially issued what was to be a highly significant and
challenging statement on the controversial issue of the “Jewish
question.” It read as follows:

For God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all (Rom. 11:32).

We believe in the Lord and Savior, who as a person came from the people of Israel.

We Confess the Church which is joined together in one body of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians and whose peace is Jesus
Christ.

We believe God’s promise to be valid for his Chosen People even after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

We state that by omission and silence we became
implicated before the God of mercy in the outrage which has been perpetrated against
the Jews by people of our nation. We caution all Christians not to balance what has come
upon us as God’s judgment against what we have done to the Jews; for in
judgment God’s mercy searches the repentant.

We ask all Christians to dissociate themselves from all
antisemitism and earnestly to resist it, whenever it stirs again, and to
encounter Jews and Jewish Christians in a brotherly spirit.

We ask the Christian congregations to protect Jewish
graveyards within their areas if they are unprotected.
We pray to the Lord of mercy that he may bring about the
Day of Fulfillment when we will be praising the triumph of Jesus Christ
together with the saved Israel.(1)

The primary purpose of the eight-sentence statement was to
put the church on record as opposing antisemitism in postwar Germany and
to acknowledge the church’s silence during the Third Reich. But the statement
also briefly addressed the church’s theological anti-Judaism. By
declaring in the third sentence that God’s promise to the Jews remained in force
even after the crucifixion of Christ, the Berlin-Weissensee statement
rejected the centuries-old theory of supersessionism whereby the church
superseded the Jews as God’s chosen people. The notion that God had rejected
the Jewish people in favor of the church was fundamental to the philosophy
undergirding the missionary enterprise. Consequently the repudiation of
supersessionism undermined the theological foundation of the Protestant
mission to the Jews.

However, the Berlin-Weissensee statement did not
explicitly reject missionizing Jews. In fact, it concluded in traditional
Christian triumphalist language: “We pray to the Lord of mercy that
he may bring about the Day of Fulfillment (Tag der Vollendung) when we will
be praising the triumph of Jesus Christ together with the saved Israel.”
The Berlin-Weissensee statement reflects the confusion in the
church over its mission to Israel in postwar Germany. The message of the
synod was ambiguous. If the Jews were still God’s chosen people then why did
the church need to pray that Jews would recognize Jesus as the Messiah?

Missionaries in general did not read the statement as a call for them to stop their
work among Jews. In addition to the ambiguity of the statement itself, the
autonomy enjoyed by the regional churches in Germany meant that in some
churches, such as the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Bavaria, clergymen
continued to actively seek to convert Jews while other churches transformed their
missions into organizations that sought a dialogue between church and
synagogue.

As an example of those still actively seeking converts, can
be cited the Bavarian Lutheran Pastor Wilhelm Grillenberger, who in
the spring of 1951 reported on his activities over the preceding six months as
director of the Evangelical-Lutheran Mission to the Jews in Munich.(2)
His work from November 1950 to May 1951 fell into two categories: New Testament
instruction with Jews in preparation for their conversion to Protestantism and
outreach to potential Jewish converts. Grillenberger elaborated on five Jews he was instructing in
the basic tenets of Lutheranism. He spent one night a week with
55-year-old Eduard M., a survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp, discussing
Martin Luther’s Small Catechism and preparing Eduard M. and his wife to
convert to Protestantism. He met twice a week with Judka S., a Jew
from Lodz, Poland, who had been in the Feldafing DP camp twenty miles
southwest of Munich. According to Grillenberger, the 45-year-old Judka S. was a
widower, alone in the world, suffered from stomachaches, was mistrustful of
everyone, especially other Jews from the camp, and was hoping to emigrate
soon. Judka S. had received six months of instruction in Luther’s Small
Catechism but Grillenberger believed he needed to strengthen his faith
before being baptized. Another student, 23-year-old Erich S., was the
son of a Protestant mother and Jewish father, who was now dead. “The
lessons with him are a joy,” Grillenberger reported, “because he has not received much
in the way of lessons in Judaism.” Grillenberger believed Erich S. would
need the rest of the year to study and learn about Christianity before he was
ready to convert. Another man receiving instruction was a 30-year-old
Polish Jew. Even though he intended to emigrate in four weeks, Grillenberger
lamented that he could not participate more regularly in Catechism lessons
because his job as a chauffeur for the American Joint Distribution Committee
did not allow him enough free time. Finally, Grillenberger reported that a
51-year-old half-Jew (sic) named Paul B. had registered to be baptized and
intended to live at the Jewish mission in Munich for a month to prepare for the
baptism. Paul B., Grillenberger noted, hoped to become a Lutheran pastor.

In the area of missionary outreach, Grillenberger visited
Jewish homes in the Munich area. “The discussions are open, friendly, and lead
in many cases to wonderful results,” he reported. He praised the work of the
laymen and women connected to the mission office in Munich, who also made
house visits and distributed the New Testament among Jews in the nearby
DP camps.(3) Every Thursday afternoon in the mission station Grillenberger
held a Bible study for Jews who had converted and those who were interested in
converting. He also preached “mission sermons” once or twice a month in
Lutheran churches.(4) He was particularly grateful to pastor Heinz David Leuner, a
Jew from Breslau who converted to Protestantism in 1935 and fled to Britain, for
lecturing and preaching twice in Munich during the past six months.
And finally he reported that he regularly visited the synagogue in Munich where he
made new contacts.

Grillenberger’s report was typical of missionaries who
were engaged in the everyday work of proselytizing in the late 1940s and 1950s.
The Bavarian Jewish Mission was a branch of the
Evangelical-Lutheran Central Federation for the Mission to Israel
(Evangelische-lutherische Zentralverein fuer Mission unter Israel), which was reconstituted in
October 1945 by Karl Heinrich Rengstorf (1903-92), a professor of theology in
Muenster and director of the Institutum Judaicum, originally founded by Franz
Delitzsch (1813-90), the father of the mission to Israel in Germany.(5)
Rengstorf acknowledged in 1945 that in consideration of all that had happened to Jews
during the last twelve years that it would be inappropriate to begin
immediately with traditional missionary work, defined as actively seeking out
Jews with the intent to convince them to convert to Protestantism.(6)
Instead Rengstorf recommended that the Central Federation concentrate on
studying the present situation of Jews and baptized Jews in Germany and
combating negative stereotypes of Jews. Rengstorf did not renounce the
church’s obligation to preach the gospel to Jews, he simply wanted to curtail the
conversion efforts for the time being.

Although the local branches of the Central Federation also
declared their intention to study the history of Jews and Judaism and to
combat antisemitism, the large influx of eastern European Jews into Germany in
1946 and 1947 brought about a return of traditional missionary efforts.
Many of the Jews arriving in Germany from Eastern Europe in 1945 and 1946
were fleeing Poland where pogroms and other antisemitic activities had resulted
in the deaths of hundreds of Jews.(7) Polish Jews and other Jewish
refugees housed in DP camps had no intention of remaining in Germany for an extended
period of time. Ironically, occupied Germany from 1945 to 1952
functioned as a sanctuary for Jews while they waited for the opportunity to emigrate to
Palestine/Israel, the United States, Australia, and elsewhere.

The DP camps and the temporary quarters for Jews in cities
such as Munich provided missionaries with concentrated groups of Jews
whose own faith had been weakened or challenged by their experiences over the
past twelve years. Although many Protestant pastors considered the influx of
tens of thousands of east European Jews into Germany highly regrettable, if not
objectionable, missionaries saw both an opportunity and an obligation. At
a meeting of pastors and missionaries in Nuremberg in 1946 Pastor
Wilhelm Friedrich Hopf (1910-82) described the flood of Polish Ostjuden into
Bavaria as an “inducement to steer our congregations toward a Christian
and missionary outlook on the Jewish question.”(8) According to Hopf it
was both an opportunity for the church to prove that it was not
antisemitic and an obligation to preach the good news to all men.

For missionaries the solution to the “Jewish question” or
“Jewish problem” was conversion. Although missionaries seeking to convert Jews
insist they are not antisemitic, their ultimate goal as the theologian Eva
Fleischner argues, “. . . is baptism and entrance into the Church, with the
consequent disappearance of the Jew as Jew.”(9) Whereas the Nazis had tried to
solve the Jewish question by deporting and killing Jews, postwar
missionaries sought to solve it by persuading Jews to join the Christian Church and
assimilate. Since the Nazis had closed down the missions in the late 1930s and
early 1940s maintaining that Jews as a race corroded German society,
the missionaries presented the postwar reconstitution of the missions as a
sign of the Lutheran churches‚ opposition to antisemitism and their love for the
Jews. There was no better way, missionaries contended, for the church to
express its aversion to the racial hatred of the Nazis and the continuation of
antisemitism in postwar Germany than to open their arms to Jews,
especially the demoralized and uprooted Ostjuden, by preaching the gospel to them. If
anyone needed to hear the good news that Christ had suffered and died to
take away the sins of the world, it was Jews. Not to preach to the Jews would be
antisemitic because it would indicate a racial bias against them.

Most parishioners, pastors, and church leaders accepted in
theory the philosophy underpinning the mission to the Jews in the
immediate postwar years. In reality, however, practical support was lacking.
Many devoted missionaries complained that prejudice toward Jews by
church leaders and congregations resulted in a lack of support for the missions.
For example, Pastor Theo Burgstahler (1896-1965), a missionary in Ulm
where over 10,000 Jews were housed in various camps in 1947, complained
that, “Missionaries by the thousands carry the gospel to the pagan world,” but
“Israel [i.e., the Jews in Germany] remains until today the stepchild of the
mission.”(10) According to a report submitted by pastor Hopf of the
Nuremberg mission, Bavaria was an exception. He and his colleague Martin
Wittenberg maintained that the work of the Bavarian Mission to Israel was strongly
supported by the rest of the Bavarian pastorate as well as leaders of the
Bavarian Lutheran Church. Evidence of this support was the substantial
financial contributions the Bavarian Mission received in the fall of 1946 from over
200 parsonages in response to Hopf and Wittenberg’s appeal for
contributions.(11) Perhaps the fact that tens of thousands of Jews had recently streamed
into Bavaria convinced many pastors that a “Jewish problem” still
existed and that the mission was the way to resolve it.

Hopf’s enthusiastic and optimistic assessment in his
official report notwithstanding, in private correspondence he also
frequently complained about the lack of support from church leaders.(12) Although the
official discrimination against Jews came to an end with Hitler’s
defeat, the ingrained prejudices against Jews did not disappear overnight. The
distorted image of the Jew as a black-marketeer living extravagantly on care
packets from wealthy Jews abroad while everyday German Gentiles barely
survived in bombed-out basements did not bring a flood of support for the missions.
The vast majority of Jewish refugees in Germany wanted to emigrate
and most Germans were happy to see them go. It was only the missionaries
who hoped to offer Jews a permanent home in the Evangelical Church in Germany.

These missionaries believed that they had a deeper
obligation to preach the gospel to Jews than to pagans. Even the pastors and
theologians who believed that both the continued existence of Jews in Europe after
the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948 were signs
of the Jews‚ chosen status maintained that until Jews recognized Jesus as the
Messiah they had not fulfilled their purpose as God’s chosen people. In April
1948 in Darmstadt, the council of brethren, which consisted of churchmen
from the former Confessing Church who wanted to reform the postwar
church, had declared that “God remains true to Israel and does not abandon it,
despite its disloyalty, despite its rejection of Christ. . . . At the same time,
however, the Church is waiting for the erring children of Israel to resume the
place reserved for them by God.”(13) This type of thinking, I believe, was
more representative of the Protestant Church than the rejection of
supersessionism in the Berlin-Weissensee statement two years later.

The Darmstadt statement of 1948 and the Berlin-Weissensee statement of 1950
are often juxtaposed by theologians and historians
(including myself) for the purpose of underscoring the differences between the two.
Typically, scholars argue that the Berlin-Weissensee statement marks a major
advance over the Darmstadt statement because it rejects supersessionism
whereas the Darmstadt statement affirms it. But, in fact, the two statements have
an important underlying theme in common: they express the hope that
Jews will join the church and thereby fulfill their God-given mission. To be
sure, the Berlin-Weissensee statement is subtler and less smug: “We
pray to the Lord of mercy that he may bring about the Day of Fulfillment when
we will be praising the triumph of Jesus Christ together with the saved Israel.”

Whereas, the Darmstadt statement implores Protestant churches and
pastors to “Tell them [the Jews] that the promises of the Old Testament are
fulfilled in Jesus Christ.” As Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, the director of the
Evangelical-Lutheran Federation for the Mission to Israel, explained, the sorrow
the church felt for the Jews “springs from the knowledge that the Jews as
such, although chosen by God, have not yet come to the goal which was
appointed with their election . . . .”(14) In short, the rejection of
supersessionism alone did not mean the end of the missionary movement. Even if
directors of the missions complained that they did not receive the practical
and financial support they wanted, there is plenty of evidence before and
after Berlin-Weissensee that missions to the Jews were widely
accepted as necessary and theologically valid.

What was the Jewish response to Protestant missionaries in
the immediate postwar years? This is more difficult to determine;
although Grillenberger mentions 5 Jews who expressed interest in converting, I
have uncovered only the opinions of prominent Jews. One critic, Rabbi Steven
S. Schwarzschild (1924-89) who served as rabbi in Berlin from 1948 to 1950,
asked rhetorically in the Berlin Jewish periodical “The Way” (Der Weg),
whether Christians in Germany were in the moral position to proselytize
considering the recent “bloodbath” that took place in Christian Central
Europe.(15) He noted that since the end of the war a number of Protestant and
Catholic organizations with innocuous names had been established in Germany
professing to promote friendly relations with Jews and a deeper understanding of
Judaism.

Schwarzschild acknowledged that much could be done to
improve relations between Jews and Germans, and that genuine efforts in this
direction should be applauded. But some of these organizations he charged hid
their true intensions, i.e., to persuade Jews to convert. He found this
particularly reprehensible when these groups focused their attention on
Jews in the DP camps, Jews whose lives had been turned upside down by
over a decade of persecution. He singled out the Protestant periodical
“Judaica” and the Catholic periodical “Freiburger Rundbrief” as typical
examples of publications engaged in missionary activities under the guise of fighting
antisemitism and encouraging a dialogue between Christians and Jews.(16)

Since most German and Polish rabbis had either been
murdered by the Nazis or fled abroad, the dialogue sought by Protestant clergymen,
Schwarzschild contended, was not a dialogue between equal partners. The
Jews approached by Christians after the war were more often than not
uneducated war refugees who were intellectually unprepared to defend themselves
against the aggressive arguments of Christian pastors and theologians. Even the
Christian organizations that explicitly repudiated missionary work
and genuinely sought a dialogue with Jews, Schwarzschild accused of engaging
in a monologue ö if only because Jewish theologians were in such short supply
in Germany.(17)

Schwarzschild concluded that the first stage in the process
of reconciliation was not to aggressively promote a close friendship after
years of animosity. First a period of time needed to lapse during which Jews
and Christians lived next to each other in a peaceful and respectful manner.
Wounds needed to heal before friendship and dialogue were possible.
Rabbi Leo Baeck (1873-1956), one of two rabbis from
more than two-dozen to survive internment in Thieresenstadt
concentration/extermination camp, was subtler in his critique of the Protestant missions to the
Jews.(18) Baeck, along with Professors Martin Buber and Hans-Joachim
Schoeps, were identified by Schwarzschild as prominent German Jews who worked
with some of the Christian organizations that Schwarzschild criticized.

After his release from Thieresenstadt Baeck emigrated to England in 1945 and
returned to Germany for the first time in October 1948. During this visit he
participated in the first conference on Christian-Jewish relations organized by
the Evangelical-Lutheran Committee for Service to Israel,
whose director was Rengstorf. Baeck delivered a lecture entitled, “Judaism on
Old and New Paths,” which two years later was published in “Judaica,” a
periodical edited by Pastor Robert Brunner of the Basel mission to Israel.
Baeck argued that true Christians must recognize their Jewish roots and
contended that the Protestant Church during the Nazi era was a glaring
example of what happens when Christians forget this. He reproached Christians who
took the Holocaust as a sign of God’s rejection and damnation of the Jewish
people. In a 1954 article that appeared in a collection of essays by leading
European Christians in missionary organizations and friendship societies, Baeck
criticized the church’s tendency to approach Jews from a position of
superiority. He saw nothing inappropriate with the missionary task per se. In
fact, he argued that if Christians were indifferent it would signify “some
inner weakness and indolence or even a self-centeredness contradictory to the
religious way.”(19)But what he did not like was when the church depicted the
Jewish people as the rejected people and condescendingly offered to save
them from damnation by inviting them into the church. “There could be no greater
barrier to mutual understanding, or to even honest and heartfelt discussion,”
Baeck believed, then failing to acknowledge that the Old Testament and
Judaism did not need the New Testament or the church to complete it.

The German-Jewish scholar Hans Joachim-Schoeps
(1909-80), who spent the Second World War in Sweden and lost his parents in Nazi death
camps, returned to Germany in 1946 and took a position in the theology
department at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria. Since his own research
in the 1930s and later focused on Christian-Jewish relations, Schoeps was a
formidable Jewish voice in the postwar Christian-Jewish dialogue. Schoeps
expressed the hope that Jews and Christians would recognize the validity of
God’s revelation at both Sinai and Golgotha in his 1948 essay, “Possibilities
and Limits to Jewish-Christian Understanding.”(20) Significantly,
however, he insisted that Jews could not be expected to recognize God’s covenant
with the church as valid for themselves. “Every Jew today, as in the past,
must reject Jesus as the Messiah of Israel. . . . We are, however, prepared to
recognize that, in some way which we do not understand, a Messianic
significance for non-Jewish mankind is attached to the figure of this man [Jesus of
Nazareth]. . . . In thus recognizing that the revelation of the church of Jesus
Christ has its sphere of validity, from which only Israel is excepted by
virtue of its direct election by the Father, I do not believe that I offend against
the Jewish tradition.”(21) In no way, Schoeps argued, did recognizing
the importance of Jesus for Christians challenge Judaism. Judaism he
insisted was not in need of completion or fulfillment.

Although he left it to Christian theologians to decide
whether or not Christians should be instructed to recognize the validity of
the covenant God made with the Jewish people, he made his own opinion
quite clear. He acknowledged that for Christians to accept the continued
validity of God’s election of Israel would require not only the abandonment
of central beliefs of the church but also its missionary enterprise. But
historical accuracy demanded, Schoeps argued, a rejection of these views.
“For the church to revise this judgment [that the Jews have been rejected by
God], which would imply abandonment by the church of its mission among the
Jews, seems more than justified by historical experience.” By “historical
experience” Schoeps meant the continued existence of the Jews despite the many
attempts to destroy them.”We must express the hope that, just as today we are
prepared to acknowledge the witness of the Church to be true, as the truth that has
been granted exclusively to the Church, so the Church may also
acknowledge our awareness of God and his covenant with us as true, as the truth which has
been granted exclusively to us . . . .”(22) In an age when fewer and
fewer Europeans, Jews and gentiles, were actively engaged in professing their
faith, Schoeps called for a mutual acknowledgement of each other’s truth.

Certainly there were Christian theologians in
Germany in the 1950s and 1960s, including Helmut Gollwitzer, Guenther Harder, and
Heinrich Vogel, who whole heartedly agreed with Schwarzschild, Baeck, and
Schoeps‚ critiques of the church’s mission to the Jews, supersessionism, and
Christian triumphalism.(23) In fact, debate raged in the church in the
1960s and 1970s over whether the church’s mission to the Jews in all forms
should be unequivocally repudiated. An important moment was the
1961 Kirchentag. But it was not until 1980 that the regional Synod of the
Evangelical Church in the Rhineland explicitly repudiated the church’s mission to
Israel. Using language very similar to that used by Schoeps in 1948,
Eberhard Bethge, the principal author of the Rhineland Synod declaration, and
the representatives of the Rhineland regional church declared, “We believe
that in their respective calling Jews and Christians are 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 as it does its
mission to the peoples of the world.” In the two decades since 1980 many
of the regional churches have published similar documents repudiating the
mission to Israel.

Significantly the Bavarian Lutheran Church issued a 4-page
position paper on “Christians and Jews” in 1998 that did not explicitly reject
missionizing Jews but did call for Bavarian Lutherans to “think through anew”
the church’s mission to the Jews.(24) The glaring absence of an explicit
rejection of the mandate to witness to Jews was only partially muted by the
Bavarian Lutheran Bishop Hermann von Loewenich’s announcement that he
personally opposes missionary efforts directed at Jews.(25) And in 2000 the
EKD revisited the 1950 Berlin-Weissensee statement in a document entitled,
“Christian and Jews: A Manifesto 50 Years after the Weissensee Declaration.”
Although EKD Synod failed to reject missionizing Jews altogether, it did urge
dialogue, respect, and “a brotherly and sisterly relationship between
Christians and Jews.”(26)

Why did it take four decades in some regional churches,
even longer in others, and is still a matter of debate among some church leaders,
for German Protestants to reject the church’s mission to the Jews?
First, it is relatively easy in retrospect to see how Christian
anti-Judaism played a role in fostering and legitimizing an antisemitic milieu that
made the Holocaust possible. But in Germany and elsewhere in Europe this
was not immediately apparent in the late 1940s and 1950s. An extended period
of intense reflection was necessary before recognizing Christian
teaching, especially Christian triumphalism, as a primary culprit. Second, the
theological foundation of anti-Judaism was so deeply rooted in the
church’s doctrine and traditions that a repudiation of this theology was no small
endeavor. It meant overturning some of the most basic tenets of
Protestant Christianity, and this revision naturally met with stiff resistance at first.
Third, the founding of Israel in May 1948 had less of an impact on the
church’s attitude toward Jews and Judaism than is often argued. Although
some Protestant theologians viewed the founding of the state of Israel as a
sign of the continued choseness of the Jewish people, others
recognized the secular nature of the state. In fact, those who did not attribute a
theological meaning to the founding of Israel argued convincingly that Jews living
in Germany were, in fact, easier to reach with the gospel than Jews in Israel,
where proselytizing was condemned. Fourth, Christian guilt over
the persecution of Jews during the Third Reich led some pastors to conclude
that the church must never abandon Jews again and viewed a repudiation of the
mission to Israel as a continuation of antisemitism and an abandonment of the
Jews. And finally, the temptation to missionize the large numbers of Jewish
refugees in the immediate postwar years and again in the 1990s with the
emigration of tens of thousands of Russian Jews to Germany proved too strong
for many Protestant pastors and church leaders to resist.

Endnotes

1: The following translation is from The Theology of the
Churches and the Jewish People: Statements by the World Council of
Churches ands its Member Churches, with commentary by Allan Brockway, Paul van
Buren, Rolf Rendtorff, and Simon Schoon (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1988),
47-49.

2: Wilhelm Grillenberger, “Bericht über meine Taetigkeit
in der Münchener Judenmission vom November 1950 bis Mai 1951,” LKAN,
LKR XIV, 1608a.

3: As of 1952 there were approximately 12,000 Jews still
in DP camps in Germany. This was down from 182,000 in summer 1947.
The vast majority of Jewish DPs lived in the American zone, which included
Bavaria.

4: Hans-Siegfried Huβ collected several mission
sermons, including a few by Grillenberger, in Redet mit Jerusalem freundlich:
Predigten (Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 1951).

5: Rengstorf et ala to Oberkirchenrat Stuttgart, 24 Oct.1945, LKAS,
A126/658.

6: See Eva Fleichner, Judaism in German Christian Theology since 1945, ATLA Monograph Series, No. 8, (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1975), 139 and Heinz Kremers, Judenmission heute? Von der Judenmission zur
bruederlichen Solidaritaet und zum oekumenischen Dialog (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1979), 10-11.

7: See Angelika Koenigseder and Juliane Wetzel, Waiting
for Hope: Jewish Displaced Persons in Post-World War II Germany,
translated from the German by John A. Broadwin (Evanston. IL: Northwestern University
Press, 1994), 43-53.

8: Hopf, “Niederschrift,” 23 Oct. 1946, LKAN, V. III/51,1.

9: Eva Fleischner, Judaism in German Christian Theology
since 1945, ATLA Monograph Series, No. 8, (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press,
1975), 139.

10: Theo Burgstahler in Der Freund Israels 74: 6 (Dec.
1947): 83.

11: Hopf, “Niederschrift,” LKAN, V. III/51, 1.

12: See Hopf’s correspondence with Rengstorf in LKAN,
V. III/51, 1.

13: An English translation of “Ein Wort zur Judenfrage” is
available in the World Council of Churches collection of statements, The
relationship of the Church to the Jewish People, (Geneva (1964), 48-52.

14: Karl Heinrich Rengstorf, “The Jewish Problem and the
Church’s Understanding of its Mission,” in Goete Hedenquist, ed.,
The Church and the Jewish People (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1954), 30.

15: Born in Frankfurt, Schwarzschild moved with his
family in 1939 to New York City, where he attended high school. Later, he
enrolled at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio. Ordained a rabbi at Hebrew Union
College in Cincinnati in 1948, he served as a rabbi in both parts of Berlin and in
East Germany from 1948-1950 and in Fargo, North Dakota, and in Lynn,
Massachusetts, from 1950-1964. The quote is from Steven S. Schwarzschild,
“Freundschaft oder Missionarbeit?” Der Weg 47 (25 Nov. 1949): 9.

16: In a response to Schwarzschild’s article editors of the
Freiburger Rundbrief denied that they had any missionary intentions.
See Freiburger Rundbrief (April 1950), 15-17.

17: Frank Stern discusses some of these organizations in
his article, “Wider Antisemitismus-für christlich-juedische Zusammenarbeit.
Aus der Entstehungszeit der Gesellschaften und des
Koordinierungsrats,” Menora: Jahrbuch fuer deutsch-juedische Geschichte 3 (1992):
182-209.

18: Born in Lissa (now Leszno, Poland) on May 24, 1873,
Baeck studied at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin and at the Juedisch-
theologisches Seminar, Breslau and the Hochschule fuer die Wissenschaft des
Judentums in Berlin, receiving his doctorate in 1895 and rabbinical ordination in
1897. He served as a rabbi in Oppeln, Duesseldorf, and Berlin, as a lecturer
at the Hochschule, and from 1933 to 1942 as president of the
Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden. Deported to Theresienstadt in 1943, he
emigrated to Great Britain in 1945, and became chairman of the World Union
for Progressive Judaism and first president of the Leo Baeck Institute. He
died in London on November 1, 1956. The other Rabbi to survive
Theresienstadt was Rabbi Neuhaus of Frankfurt.

19: Leo Baeck, “Some Questions to the Christian Church
from the Jewish Point of View,” in Goete Hedenquist, ed., The Church and the
Jewish People (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1954), 108.

20: Hans Joachim Schoeps, “Moeglichkeiten und Grenzen
juedisch-christlicher
Verstaendigung,” Unterwegs 3 (1948): 4-11.

21: Schoeps, “Moeglichkeiten,” 5-6.

22: Hans Joachim Schoeps, The Jewish-Christian
Argument: A History of Theologies in Conflict, trans. David Green (London: Faber
and Faber, 1963), 167.

23: One can easily trace a similar change in perspective
toward proselytizing by Catholics in Germany in the Catholic periodical
Freiburger Rundbrief edited by Gertrud Luckner and Karl Thieme.

24: The position paper was issued at the Bavarian
Church’s November 1998 Nuremberg Synod. See, “Freiburger Rundbrief,” 6, no. 3
(1999): 191-97. For an English translation see the “Jewish-Christian Relations”
website, www.jcrelations.net.

25: Bishop Loewenich’s remarks are quoted in “Synode
aktuell” Evangelischer Presseverband fuer Bayern (24 November 1998).

26: See the “Jewish-Christian Relations” website for
English and German translations of this document.

Matthew D. Hockenosmhockeno@skidmore.edu

Dear Friends,
Contents:

1) Gerhard Besier, The German Churches 1933-2003, Part II
2) Forthcoming Catholic conference, Munich, May 22-23.
3) Book note: Weindel, Leben und Lernen hinter Stacheldraht

1) The ecclesio-political development in the Federal Republic of Germany 

The growing affinity of eastern EKD member churches with Socialism cannot
be understood without considering the analogous development in western
churches and in the ecumenical movement of Geneva.
The post-war re-structuring of the Social Democratic Party (“SPD”) and the
emergence of a new elite -a process that was basically concluded by the
Godesberg Party Program of 1959 – resulted in a fundamental consensus
between the two main parties as to the social-political significance of the
two mainline churches. From the mid-1960s onward, the Christian-Democratic
Union (“CDU”) no longer enjoyed the support of the majority of the
Protestant Church. Due to the above-mentioned change of elite, the SPD became
a “Protestant Party” (Willy Brandt), and remained so until the mid-1980s..
By the early-1990s, the Catholic Church still showed a certain affinity
with the CDU/CSU (Union of Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists).
But following the peace and ecology debates in the 1980s, parts of the
Protestant Church and the Green Party moved closer together, thus splitting
sympathies in the center-left wing. When characterizing the closeness or
distance of a church to a political party, the attitudes of church
officials are significant. But the voting habits of citizens with
denominational ties show that they did not and do not generally follow the
mental gymnastics of their bishops, church presidents, and pastors. The
growing distinctions of church milieus and the mental distance between the
leaders and the people of the church has not been without consequences.
Principally, one must note that all these socio-political
transformations hardly affected the status of Free Churches, Christian
“Special Associations,” and so-called “sects.” They remained on the social
periphery and, due to latent reservations, they had to put up with many
professional disadvantages.

From 1969, one could no longer ignore the gradual emigration of Christians
from the two mainline churches. At the same time commissioners for sect
issues of the mainline churches increased their apologetic activity against
so-called “youth cults.” Since 1969, the Protestant Church has carried out
official polls every ten years in order to record the way of thinking, the
feelings, and actions of church members. However, these churches are
experiencing the loss of members, while new religious groups and secular
providers of life-counseling services are gaining ground. The inner
emaciation of mainline churches, particularly the Protestant Church, could
force politicians to reconsider the privileged position of the churches,
even though the legal status of the churches under public law, as written
into the 1949 Constitution, is not endangered. A minority church will no
longer be able to play, as hitherto, a unique and privileged role in
shaping society. Instead it will have to gain recognition for its
arguments in pluralistic discourse with other social groups. Thereby, much
will depend on the persuasiveness of their arguments. The two smaller coalition
parties-Free Democratic Party (“FDP”) and Bündnis 90/Die
Grünen-have considerable political potential, as they speak in favor of a
clear separation of State and Church. The more external power the churches
lose due to their declining number of members, the more influence
will be gained by members of these parties and by liberal skeptics of the
National Church. The Protestant Church now attempts to counteract this
development with personal political contacts. This explains why, for
example, in 1997 Schmidt-Jortzig (FDP), then Federal Minister of Justice,
and Antje Vollmer (Bündnisgrüne), Vice-President of the Federal Parliament,
were appointed to the new Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany. It
remains to be seen whether this actually archaic technique of
diplomacy – politics by personal contacts – will lead to success.

It can be quite clearly seen how the established religious institutions
during the 19th and 20th centuries lost their power to attract people. At the
same time, the emotional power of political surrogate religions in Germany
grew. Exaggerated nationalism, undiminished personality cult (Bismarck,
Hindenburg, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin), Socialism, and National Socialism were
political movements that took over the role of religious revival and
veneration of the saints. Likewise, the peace movement of the 1980s, the
human rights movement, and the environmental movement also showed
unmistakably religious traits. The fact that the larger religious
associations curried favor with these movements, indeed sometimes claiming
to be the original creators of these ideas, does not change their position
as tolerated free-riders who were pityingly smiled at and even despised.
The inner emaciation of the Protestant church has reached an enormous
amount. In 1950, it had 43 million members, whereas now there are 26.6
million left. Berlin-Brandenburg has fewer people going to a regular
Protestant service on Sundays than people working for deaconry and church.
According to some polls, up to a third of clerics themselves do not believe
in the fundamentals of Christian belief: Holy Scripture, Jesus Christ as God’s
son, salvation. The believers perceive this inner discrepancy, feel
mystified and turn away from the church. According to a finding of the
Allensbach Opinion Research Institute, only a minority of Germans, namely
39 % have the impression that the churches seek to “convince people of
belief” at all. For a number of years, at least a third of people
interviewed in relevant opinion polls declare that they do not confide in
the churches. This is understandable when considering the churches’ history
and their not irrelevant number of political and theological odysseys. The
churches are facing the danger of demographic over-aging well above that of
the general population. All of this does not encourage good forecasts for
the German state churches. On the other hand, there is evidence that
Christian belief will survive the state-like German religious institutions,
since for years opinion pollers have been noting a development which might
be summed up as “yes to belief, no to the Church.” This could be, even in
Germany, the great moment of small Free churches and religious communities.

History of Mentalities: Problems of the Church Reunification in 1989/91

In late summer of 1989, the already unstable dictatorship of the GDR
expected some positive assertions by the Protestant church on its
relationship with the regime during the 20 years of history of the Church
Federation. Few were forthcoming. Yet, even in West Germany there were
some churchmen, such as the editor of the magazine “Young Church” (“Junge
Kirche”), who expressed their support “in principle, solidarity towards the
GDR.” Bishops and general
superintendents of churches in the GDR admonished those people attempting to
leave East Germany, to stay in the country. Although they also pointed out
the regime’s lack of preparedness to introduce reforms, yet in spite of
their critiques, the clergymen praised certain achievements of GDR
socialism, saying they were worth keeping and for which it was worth
staying in the country. The “social securing of the basic needs of life,”
“the priority of the responsibility for peace in foreign policy [of the
GDR],” “the anti-fascist commitment of our country,” and “the basic
socialist matter of concern, of sharing the toll and the fruits of work
with each other”, were among the factors selected for praise.
But, during the latter half of 1989, due to the ensuing political
development, more and more obvious tensions grew amongst the leaders of the
Conference of Church Governing Bodies in the GDR. By the beginning of 1990, the issue of
national reunification was on everyone’s mind. On the one hand, Bishop
Christoph Demke of the Province of Saxony, but also General Superintendent
Günter Krusche of Berlin, strongly rejected the idea of German
re-unification. But otherpersons, such as Bishop Leich of Thuringia,
welcomed this development. From the sequence of events during that period
we can conclude that the discussion about German unification or re-unification preceded the
discussion about re-unifying the churches, and might even be considered its
pre-condition. Among some East German clergymen, there was a clear
“rejecting attitude towards that twaddle of re-unification.” Not only those
taking a positive position towards the GDR state as Demke, but also those who massively criticized the
regime, such as Bishop Gottfried Forck of Berlin-Brandenburg, wanted to
preserve the “option for socialism.”

After Egon Krenz took Erich Honecker’s place as general secretary of the
SED on October 18, 1989, he intensified contacts with the Conference
of Governing Church Bodies and tried to find a harmonious new beginning
with them on the basis of a changed Socialism. Again, the bishops were
divided in their reaction. Whereas some put great hopes in the new policy
of dialogue, others remained sceptical. The breach of the Berlin Wall on
November 9, 1989 created a new situation in so far as it became clear that,
despite all appeals, the people were flocking to the West. On November 28,
the then West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl, presented a program on the
Federal German policy, consisting of ten points, to the West German
Parliament – the aim of which was the re-unification of both countries. In
Dresden, on December 19, Chancellor Kohl and GDR Prime Minister Hans Modrow
announced a union by treaty [Vertragsgemeinschaft] of both German states
for the spring of 1990.

At the end of November 1989 the church leaders in the GDR, Christoph
Demke, Günter Krusche and Pastor Friedrich Schorlemmer signed an appeal
“For our country,” in which they demanded “a socialist alternative to the
Federal Republic.” They warned the readers that a “selling off of our
material and moral values is starting, and sooner or later the German
Democratic Republic will be taken.” Finally, they appealed to the
population: “We can still go back to our anti-fascist and humanist ideals
we once started from.”

The BEK board on “Church and Society” criticized this one-sided view of
things, but pointed to the differences in mentality which had arisen
between East and West, and advised against “precocious plan[s] and aim[s]
of a governmental unification of the Germans.” The chief administrative
officer (Konsistorialpräsident) of the Protestant church of
Berlin-Brandenburg, Manfred Stolpe, like Demke, still belonged to those who
wanted to preserve a separate GDR state. The population in general, on the
contrary, voiced more and more determined demands for joining
(anschliessen) the Federal Republic in their “Monday demonstrations”.

The expression “joining” (“Anschluss”) – in German a word with the negative
connotation of a forced political union, like the annexation of Austria by
Nazi Germany in 1938 – was first used by church-journalist Reinhard Henkys
during his key speech to the leading committees of both the EKD and the
Kirchenbund, in mid-January 1990 at Loccum monastery (close to Hanover).
What precisely was discussed during this meeting, remains a mystery. In any
case, the declaration that “both German states are growing together” and
that “the special union of the entire Protestant Christianity in Germany
should also find a suitable expression by a [united] church,” can’t have
been motivated by Henkys’s speech. This Loccum text had already been
formulated earlier “after a controversial debate, and not unanimously.” Especially
economic obligations were probably negotiated by the EKD Council and the
Eastern member churches. As a direct reaction to the Loccum declaration, an
Ecumenical Action Circle (Ökumenischer Initiativkreis) published a “Berlin
Declaration of Christians from both states” on February 9, 1990, signed
among others by Provost Heino Falcke (of Erfurt), Pastor Ulrich Duchrow (of
Heidelberg), Joachim Garstecki (of East Berlin) and Konrad Raiser (of
Bochum). This declaration opposed the “wrong signals” of Loccum, by which
were meant both the efforts to re-establish German state unity, and
to re-establish the EKD as sole Protestant umbrella organization. The
“misleading alternative of capitalism and socialism” should be “avoided”,
since the process of conciliation had shown that “neither system was able
to offer a solution to the question of survival of humanity and of the
earth”. Especially, in this situation, “the experience of the ‘church
within a socialist society’ [should] not be denied in order to get back to a
pretended ‘normal everyday life'”.

These sentences are evidence of the uneasiness among many leftist
intellectuals in East and West Germany. Both the state and the
church re-unification were not brought about as new mergers among equals,
taking into account the different developments of both German partial
states, but as a mere joining (“Anschluss”) of the Eastern part to the
heavily criticized structures existing in West Germany. By this, all
positive ideas on the achievements of East Germany cultivated up to then in
the East as well as in the West, proved to be illusions: nothing
in the state system of the GDR, nor in the East German Church Federation,
was to be preserved in the new era. The “progress” made under socialist
premises had, on the contrary, to give way to a “conservative-bourgeois
restoration”. This procedure could be interpreted as a collective humiliation,
and gave rise to a sense of polarization between Western and Eastern élites,
resulting in vehement controversies among intellectuals in both states
and church federations. Some Western sub-cultures too, saw themselves
deprived of their hopes of building a “third way” between East and West. The
east-west-antagonisms were of course also stirred up by those individuals,
whose former conspirative activities for the GDR led them to feel
rightly threatened by the re-unification process, or who had profited under
that system as highly privileged agents of the regime. Among them were
several professors of theology and personalities of the governing bodies of
the churches.

As was revealed in 1990, about 5 % of the members of the church
assemblies, administrative officers, and bishops were serving as officers
of the State Security Department in special deployment (OibE), or as
Unofficial Collaborators (IM) in different categories. Finally, the
parallel procedure of state and church “Anschluss” was bound to create the
impression that there was also an analogy between the SED state and the
East German Church Federation (BEK). Bishop Martin Kruse of West-Berlin
tried to counter this impression in the council meeting in February 1990 by
stressing that it was the SED state which had gone bankrupt, not the East
German Church Federation.

From the justifications of the Conference of Church Governing Bodies
following the Loccum Declaration, we may deduce that this Declaration was
written and published at the “suggestion” of the Western EKD-representatives.
At any rate, it was not possible to convince the new BEK-synod at the
end of February 1990 to adopt this declaration officially, although this
council was prepared to give overall support to the process of unification
of the churches.

Demke’s election as Leich’s successor, despite having been arranged long
before, now seemed to be a positive signal for those criticizing the church
re-unification. In the meetings of the KKL of end-April 1990, the
resistance grew against a simple re-integration of the Eastern member
churches in the EKD. However, the broad approval for a simple reunification
by public opinion in both the political and ecclesiastical spheres was
irresistible. After the East German Parliamentary elections
(Volkskammerwahlen) in March 1990, Demke appealed to Hans Modrow, who was
still Prime Minister in charge, to have the files of the state security
(Stasi) sealed from public view. Demke went on: “A denunciation of
individuals because of an alleged collaboration with the state security
service should,in my opinion, not be permitted.”

The imminent currency unification aggravated the economic problems of the
Eastern Church Federation and its member churches. At the end of May 1990, the
EKD committed herself to “a certain silent support”, but these
circumstances of course increased the dependence on the Western churches.
Neverthless, the Common Commission of Federation and EKD
in Iserlohn decided on unification of the churches, but was still uncertain
whether the GDR state churches should simply join the EKD, or whether a new
Federation should be built. They reckoned with a period until the end of
January 1993. Among other things, some special arrangements had to be made
for the Eastern member churches regarding the introduction of church taxes
to be collected by the state, the introduction of a religious education
curriculum for all the schools, and especially of a contract for pastoral care in the
armed forces.

Events came thick and fast now, because of the impending currency reform
due to take place on July 1st. This led the leading church lawyers to
believe they could not wait any longer for the results of the negotiations
of the Common Commission of BEK and EKD. Contrary to the ideas of some Eastern
representatives, they wanted a “unification on the basis of the
Constitution of the EKD”. An integration of the Eastern Church Federation
into the EKD seemed legally impossible. At the end of August 1990, the KKL
voted for “a quick establishment of a membership of the Eastern Federation
churches in the EKD.” At the same time, Martin Heckel, a church lawyer of
Tübingen presented his expert opinion, which favoured the absorption of the
eastern churches into the west, and the abandonment of the BEK. In
mid-September 1990, the juridical committee of the EKD synod adopted
Heckel’s expert opinion. The unification law of the EKD based on it merely
reactivated the old EKD member rights of the Eastern churches, which had
never been cancelled, but only downplayed or sidestepped by the
Constitution of the Eastern Church Federation. This procedure left the
number of members of the EKD untouched and did not require a common consent
of all EKD member churches. This law “stayed] below the level of
agreement of the EKD Constitution.” This
legal solution avoided modifications of the EKD Constitution, but on the
other hand it completed the unavoidable impression of an Anschluss – from
an extra-legal point of view – for those members of the Eastern churches,
who had been expecting a totally new Federation or at least a merger of both
Federations. The law having established the East German Church Federation
in 1969 was inconsistent to this solution and therefore ignored. These
circumstances and especially the dissolution of the East German Federation,
were bound to reinforce painful impressions, and caused resentments among
the losers, especially since in the arguments put forward by the Western
speakers, great weight was given to the argument that the 1969 settlement had been
imposed on the eastern churches leading to a “forced Church Federation”.

The last BEK synod preceding the German re-unification in September 1990
dealt, among other subjects, with the question of how far the churches in
the GDR “helped factually, and sometimes also willingly, to stabilize the
state and thus the dominating system.” From February 22 to
24, 1991 the BEK synod met – parallel to the EKD synod – one last time. The
vain attempts of Western clergymen failed to make the legalistic facts
appear less brutal through acts of appeasement. Rosemarie Cynkiewicz,
chairperson of the Eastern BEK synod, criticized the EKD for not being willing
to “use the situation as a chance for creating something new
together”; as well eight synod members voted against the BEK unification law,
and one abstained. The first general EKD synod met in June 1991 in Coburg.
after the Conference of Church Governing Bodies
had met for the last time. Due to the reservations in the Eastern part, it is
understandable that the act of unification in Coburg took place “without
major festivities, without any special expressions of gratitude.”
The next task was to consider the unification of the divided Protestant
church of Berlin-Brandenburg, where one half of the church – in West Berlin
– had been entirely separated from the other half in East Berlin for thirty
years. So too the question arose of how to repeal the division of the
Evangelical Church of the Union (EKU, the former Prussian state church),
and whether to welcome the restoration of the United Lutheran Church in
Germany (VELKD). It must be said that the leitmotif of these changes was to seek a return to the
situation existing at the end of the 1960s. (The common elaboration of a
new Constitution for the Protestant Church in Berlin-Brandenburg, completed
in 1995, changed nothing.)

Thus it can be no surprise that, despite the legally correct merger, the
existing tensions did not decrease, but even grew in some areas. The
argument on the employment status of military chaplains continued until the
EKD synod in Amberg in November 2001. Although ten years have passed in the
meantime, it remains uncertain whether the synods of the Protestant Church
in Berlin-Brandenburg or the Church Province of Saxony will accept the
arrangement for employing the circa 30 military chaplains of the Eastern
member churches as non-permanent federal civil servants. If we consider the
atmosphere in society in general, of which the churches are only a small
part, we find that the differences of mentality in East and West have
hardly diminished over the last ten years. Inner re-unification has
made little progress.

It was not only the re-unification of the churches, but the demographic and
economic changes brought about by the large numbers of people leaving the
churches, as well as the increase of the percentage of aging church
members, and a dramatic decrease of church taxes, which forced German
Protestantism to consider several reforms of structures. Since the
mid-1990s, a merger of some state churches as well as a reduction of the
traditional church “umbrella organisations” has been considered. In 2001
there had been a church tax income of 4.250 Billion Euro and a membership
of 26,601,000. But assessments say in the next generation there will be 50
% drop of the tax paying church members.
The repercussions for the legally-established church structures are bound
to be severe.

The Problem of Contemporary Church Historiography

The undeniable affinity of vast parts of German Protestantism with the
National Socialist state remains a heavy burden. For decades, church
historians and publicists have struggled to come to terms with this legacy.
As well, the undeniable fact that many churchmen in the eastern churches
collaborated with the socialist dictatorship has had catastrophic
consequences for the image of the Protestant church in Germany. That is why
the Protestant churches – by largely avoiding the problem of the State Security Department (Stasi) – try to
offer evidence that, during the period of the GDR’s existence, they were
engaged in a considerable number of opposition activities, following the
pattern established in the immediate post-1945 period. By assigning a large
number of doctoral dissertations, which are partly subsidised with church
stipends, this version can be expected to maintain the dominant position in
the historiography. On the other hand, there is no doubt that, since the
1960s, there has been a strong affinity in some sections of German
Protestantism with several socialist utopian views and that since the 1980s
– in connection with the NATO’s two-track decision – some clear
convergences with the “real existing socialism” in the GDR could be
perceived. The efforts of some Protestant historians to describe the
collapsed GDR regime as
something other than a pure totalitarian regime, must be seen against this
background too. Furthermore, by stressing the differences between the Nazi
regime and the SED regime, these authors are trying to give at least a
partial correction of the view that the
GDR was a criminal dictatorship, lacking the rule of law. But,
given the continuing separation of mentalities between east and west, it is
clear that the task of coming to terms with the churches’ experiences in
the GDR is far from complete, and will likely occupy a prominent position
in the historiography of the next few years.

In contrast to the large number of books and articles dealing with the
churches of the GDR, the historiography of the western members of the EKD
has been relatively sparser. For the immediate post-war years, we have
seen a plethora of excellent document collections and monographs. But the
years of the Bonn Republic from 1949-1989 are still largely unexplored
ground. And this, despite the fact that both the major denominations
established in the 1950s their own separate Commissions for Contemporary
Church History. Their publications, however, have chiefly concentrated on
the earlier much disputed periods of the twentieth century. Furthermore,
these endeavours are highly denominational in tone, and none of them has
sought to bring a wider ecumenical or international dimension to these
Commissions’ labours. All the more notable therefore was the initiative
taken in the late 1980s to bring together a group of scholars of various
nationalities and denominations in order to try and search for a larger
dimension in the writing of contemporary church history. The conferences of
this group have deliberately sought to relate German experiences to those
of other countries, such as Scandinavia, Poland, France and Italy. The
findings are printed in the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte which can be
regarded as the premier publication in this field. Nevertheless, the
historiography of the German churches for the foreseeable future is likely
to remain, as do the ecclesiastical structures of the churches themselves,
highly denominational in character. Coming to terms with the convoluted
legacy of the recent German past still presents scholars in this field with
numerous still-to-be-fulfilled challenges. Per opera ad astra!
The author, Gerhard Besier, can be contacted at the Hannah Arendt Institut
fur Totalitarismusforschung, Technische Universitat, Dresden, Germany

2) Forthcoming Catholic conference, Munich

The Catholic Commission for Contemporary Church History together with the
Catholic Academy in Bavaria announces a conference on “Tatsachen-Deutungen
-Fragen” on Thursday and Friday, May 22nd and 23rd , which will take up
many of the the themes outlined above, and at which leading practitioners
will speak. More details can be obtained from the Commission at
www.kath-akademie-bayern.de/veranstalt/

3) Book note: Ed. Matthias Weindel, Leben und Lernen hinter Stacheldraht.
Die evangelischen Lagergemeinden und Theologischen Schulen in England,
Italien und Agypten. (Arbeiten zur kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte: Reihe A:
Quellen, Band 7) Gottingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2001. 462 pp.
As an example of the newly-published series of document collections
mentioned in the final paragraph of Gerhard Besier’s essay above, we can
cite Matthias Weindel’s excellent contribution on the steps taken to assist
the German POWs in Britain, Italy and Egypt during the period 1944-1948.
These contemporary reports, mainly by the organizers, outline the measures
taken to provide church services, pastoral care, and above all theological
training in the several hundred camps, where German Protestants were held
before being finally repatriated. The initiative came from the Swedish
pastor, Birger Forell, who inspired this excellent programme, which was
then supported by the British War Office as a part of the Re-Education
programme. These reports give a full picture of the successes and
failures of this unique experiment.
With best wishes
John Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

 John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

100th Issue

Dear Friends,
To my considerable astonishment, I calculate that this comes to you as the
100th issue of our Newsletter. When I began to send out this Newsletter,
as my retirement project after so many years of teaching at the University
of British Columbia, I imagined that some reviews of recent books on church
history might be of some help to colleagues interested in our field of
research and scholarship. I supposed that a few issues would suffice to
take care of the backlog. But due to your unabated interest and support
over the last eight and a half years, as well as to the flood of new works
constantly appearing in our field of contemporary church history, I have
been encouraged to continue. Despite some unfortunate technical
difficulties, which I trust have now been resolved, the replies you have so
kindly and warmly sent back to me have given me the incentive to keep
going. This gives me an opportunity to thank those members whose
assistance over the years has been particularly helpful: Doris Bergen,
Matthew Hockenos, Mike Phayer, and Jay Hughes.

In view of this 100th milestone, and in consideration of my own long-time
interest in German church history, I thought it might be of help to us all
to ask our colleague Prof. Gerhard Besier (Heidelberg) to give us a broad
survey of the situation of the German churches over the past seventy years
since Hitler’s rise to power. His essay will be carried in two parts. We
would like also to congratulate him on his new appointment as Director of
the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism at the
Technical University in Dresden, where he will be moving to shortly.

Contents:

Seventy Years after “Machtergreifung”. The German Churches’
Political Stance 1933-2003 (Part I)

Gerhard Besier
Churches and religious communities in 1933

When Hitler seized power, Germany was an almost completely
bi-denominational country. About 63% (in absolute numbers: 39.5 million)
were members of the Protestant state churches, and 32% (24.5 million) were
Roman Catholics. Of the smaller religious and ideological groups, the
Jewish communities were the largest with an amount of 0.9% (in absolute
numbers: half a million). There were considerable
differences in mentality between the two large denominations. While Roman
Catholicism had ceased being an “Empire Church” since the decline of the
Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and, independent from state protection, had
developed to a strong power in society paired with solid milieus,
Protestantism experienced the division of Church and State only at the
beginning of the Weimar Republic. Neither before 1918 nor afterwards did
Protestantism manage to create mass structures similar to those of the
Catholics. There was no “Protestant party”, and Protestant associations
could not compare themselves with Catholic organisations, neither in size
nor by inner consistence. Socialist subculture, which was quite
heterogeneous itself, contributed considerably to loosen religious bonds,
especially in milieus with a Protestant background. The majority of people
did not adopt Socialist rites of passage, but they did distance themselves
from what the churches offered. The complaint of the church about the
“dying Sunday” pointed to the fact that after the constitutional division
of Church and State, many people felt no longer obliged to go to church.
This process of distancing oneself from the church, however, had already
begun in the last third of the 19th century and would gain more ground.The National Socialist movement as a hope of new departures for the churches

Both for those persons who were ideologically indifferent, and for official
representatives of the churches, the National Socialist movement seemed to
offer a great hope. Some recognized in it a modern response to the crisis of the
day, and looked forward to a new future under vigorous Nazi leadership. On
the other hand, many bishops and lay members of the church establishment counted on a
state-supported re-Christianisation and trusted that the conditions as they existed before
1919 would be restored. Both believed that the unifying factor of religion
was vital for Germany’s political future.

Hitler won broad support from the churches with his government’s
declaration of 23 March 1933, which contained far-reaching assurances to the
churches as “most important factors for the preservation of our ethnicity.”
Protestants especially were reminded of the “spirit of 1914”, and were
gratified to see growing numbers of church-goers. They presumed the churches would be included
in the “national revolution” in the weeks that followed 30 January 1933.The vast majority was not affected by the measures taken against political, ideological and religious minorities and therefore took a rather
indifferent stance towards their persecution. The new government’s
unequivocal breaches of human rights raised no critique among the churches;
many Protestants indeed welcomed the restrictions of basic rights and the
strong measures taken for the development of the dictatorship as a step
back to the reestablishment of law and order.

In its declaration of 28 March 1933, the Catholic episcopacy recanted
its condemnations of National Socialism as expressed in previous years.
Catholicism had a significantly smaller problem with National Socialism,
since believers as well as theologians were hardly affected by this
“political religion.” With the help of the Reich Concordat and by assuming
a diplomatic position, the Catholic Church believed it would be able to defend
its rights even under a dictatorship. The “anti-bolshevism” shared with
National Socialism was, for both churches, an important factor of
ideological and political consensus.Attempts to synthesize Christianity and National Socialism
In Protestantism, on the contrary, there existed a group who aimed to
create a synthesis of National Socialism and Christianity even before
Hitler seized power: the so-called German Christians (Deutsche Christen,
DC). This new ideology had multiple sources. The völkische Bewegung
(‘national’ or ‘ethnic’ movement), which sprang up in the last third of the
19th century, played a significant role. The younger generation of pastors
were greatly influenced by this völkisch and national body of thought. Even
the majority of the small opposition group of Confessing Church (Bekennende
Kirche, BK) within the church was of the opinion that National Socialism
had created a political system appropriate to the Germans. They only wanted
to keep the Church out of the hands of those Nazis who advocated state
control – a position which would soon prove illusory. Although the German Christians
(DC) were a minority too, it may be assumed that the majority of church
members who were not very close to the Church shared a vast part of
DC-convictions. The readiness for obedience towards state authorities and
an opportunistic philosophy of survival did their part. Had the more
radical Nazis not continually distanced themselves from the DC and expelled
them with more and more determination from their own “movement,” a final
victory of the DC-movement and the creation of a “national church” might
have been the result. After all, the decline of the “Confessing Church”
after 1938 was obvious. The so-called “intact” churches of Hannover,
Wuerttemberg and Bavaria were more ready to compromise than the “destroyed”
Prussian churches. Whereas the former did not want to endanger their
status, the latter ones had nothing left to lose. This viewpoint deserves
priority beyond inner-Protestant denominational differences.

Privileged position of the Churches in postwar-Germany

The end of WWII led – with the exception of the churches – to the breakdown
of German society. The Western Allies were aware that the churches had
heavily compromised themselves, but they were convinced, due to the
conditions existing in their own countries, that a democratic society could
not be built without Christianity. This is why they granted privileges to
the churches and gave them much scope for renewed activity. Under the
pressure of the Allies, however, both major churches had to draft an admission of guilt
first. From then on the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt issued in October
1945 was a notable document, but raised considerable objections in many
Protestant circles. Much more welcome was the attempt made by the churches
to see themselves as resistance organisations – an interpretation strongly
supported by the early post-war historiography of the Confessing Church.
Within Protestantism, the old dispute among Lutherans and United
Protestants revived in summer 1945. In order to circumvent this problem,
the traditional structures of the state churches were maintained and
reforms were mostly foregone.

On the wider scene, Protestants and Catholics were united in a
common negative opinion about the Allies’ military occupation policies. In
their struggle against denazification they withdrew to a position of legal positivism
which made all efforts of the Allies look like vindictive legislation.
Furthermore, they frequently explained away their own former positive
attitudes towards National Socialism as venial, comprehensible political errors in
reasoning, and pleaded for an end to all attempts to brand Germans as
collectively guilty. With this interpretation, the church leadership
strongly responded to the expectations of church members and improved their
social reputation. Yet, there was no lasting “movement of return to the
churches.” The numbers of people joining the churches reached their peak in
1946. In 1949, there were already 86,000 people leaving the
church versus 43,000 joining it. So, after a brief interruption, the
erosion of folk Protestantism went on. The Roman Catholic Church was spared
this erosion at first, but in the 1960s its own milieus began giving in too.
Churches and Church Policy in the GDR

When the GDR was founded, 80.5 % of the population were members of the
Protestant Church, while in 1989 the number had sunk to 24 %. While the
level of people leaving the church remained high until the mid-1970s, the
peaks lay in the years 1958 and 1975. From the mid-1970s the rate of
deserters sank, or was reduced by people joining the church. After the
collapse of the GDR, the rate of deserters increased again. The Roman
Catholic Church was in a classical minority position. Due to the refugees
from the former East German areas (now belonging to Poland) and the
Sudetenland, the number of Catholics increased from 4.7 % to 13.9 % between
1945 and 1949, but until 1954, it dropped again by a third because of
further migration and people leaving the country. In 1989, only 5.9 % of
the population were Catholics.

Two of the eight Protestant state churches, and seven Catholic dioceses
(Jurisdiktionsbezirke), covering the territory of the GDR, suffered severe
losses of territory and members because of the new frontier to Poland along
the rivers Oder and Neisse. These political factors caused substantial
reassessments in church policy and required special efforts for the
necessary re-structuring. Already in 1945, the “Conference of Eastern Churches”, called “Conference of Governing
Bodies of the Protestant Churches in the territory of the GDR” (KKL) from
1950 on, constituted itself. After the founding of both German states, the
Catholic church too established a regional bishops’ board in the territory
of the GDR, which was called “Berlin Conference of Diocesan Authorities”
(Berliner Ordinarienkonferenz, BOK).

The Soviet Military Administration (SMAD), which ruled Eastern Germany at
that time, gave the churches free rein at the beginning. The SED party,
founded by a forced unification of the Communist (KPD) and Social
Democratic (SPD) Parties in February 1946, expressed its tolerance and will
to cooperate with religious convictions and churches at the beginning, too.
This behaviour, which was mainly motivated by tactical reasons, was based
on the Basic Principles formulated by the “working group for religious
questions” of the National Committee for a Free Germany (Nationales Komitee
Freies Deutschland, NKFD) in the USSR since 1944. After 1945, some
clergymen of the NKFD had a secondary function as secret informants of the
Soviet and, later, the GDR secret service. In 1947, a “Department for
Church, Christendom and Religion” was integrated in the party structure,
while from 1949 on Walter Ulbricht’s “Small Secretariat” or some
ad-hoc-Commissions of the Politburo were appointed to treat church
questions. In 1950, a sector on “Churches and Religious Questions” was
formed within the SED State Administration, which was made an independent
department in 1954. The leaders of the Eastern Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) appointed a “Main Department on Church Questions” also. From the
beginning, the State Security Department (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit,
MfS) – that is, the Secret Service of East Germany -, founded in 1950,
worked for the SED regarding church questions too. The “political police”
K5, existing since 1947 and working closely with the Soviet Committee for a
Free Germany, had already been dealing with church questions. Still in
1950, a “Main Department for Contact with the Churches” was instituted
under the rule of Vice Prime Minister and CDU Chairman Otto Nuschke. This
department remained active until Nuschke’s death in 1957, but it gradually
lost importance. During the entire existence of the GDR, the SED party was
convinced, because of its ideological principles, that the churches were
bound to die out. The only matter of discussion over the years was the idea
of how this state-church relationship, which was expected to be limited in
time, should be organized.

The first and only summit meeting (“Spitzengespräch”) – a dialogue among
top officials – between representatives of the state and the churches of
both denominations took place in April 1950, with the aim to put an end to
church opposition against the communist development in society. Prime
Minister (Ministerpräsident) Otto Grotewohl, Walther Ulbricht, Otto
Nuschke, and MfS-Minister Wilhelm Zaisser among others, took part as
representatives of the state. This meeting brought about only a temporary
relief, which was destroyed by the forced Stalinization in 1952/53. After
Stalin’s death, the SED had to give up its policy of repression against the
“Youth Communities” and “Protestant Student Communities” at the beginning
of 1953. A second summit meeting with representatives of the churches ended
with the issuing of a communiqué stating that the conflicts were over. But
in 1954, the atheist Youth Consecration Ceremony enactment brought a new
escalation. This so-called Youth Consecration Ceremony was a secular rite
of passage intended for children of about 13 or 14 years of age by the
state. Its aim was to gradually offer a substitute for the religious rites such as
communion and confirmation maintained by the churches, an aim which was almost reached,
considering that up to the present time, about 13 years after the end of the
GDR, a much larger number of young East Germans still prefer the Youth
Consecration Ceremony to its religious equivalent.

In the spring of 1957, the office of the “State Secretary for Church
Questions” took the place of Nuschke’s “main department”. In a third summit
meeting on July 21, 1958, the representatives of the Protestant Church
declared that they acknowledged the development towards Socialism in the GDR
(“Church within Socialism”). Preceding these talks, the state had managed
to drive a wedge between the leaders of the Protestant churches by finding
certain individuals who were ready to cooperate with the regime, such as
the Bishop of Thuringia, Moritz Mitzenheim. Furthermore, the
State Security Department (MfS) had started to successfully infiltrate the
churches up to the bishops’ level with “unofficial collaborators” (IMs).
After setting up the Berlin Wall in 1961, the SED Party wanted to split the
Protestant national umbrella organisation, the EKD. In 1967, the EKD Synod
still rejected this demand, but the basis of discussion changed when a new GDR
Constitution was introduced in 1968. When the Federation of Protestant
Churches in the GDR (BEK) was founded, a new phase in state-church
relations began, the peaks of which were marked by the fourth summit
meeting of BEK chairman Bishop Albrecht Schönherr and state President Erich
Honecker on March 6, 1978, and by the agreement for cooperation between state
and church during the (500th) Martin Luther anniversary year in 1983. An
example of the poor way of “solving” conflicts during this period is the
appeasement policy followed – inclusive of the Western churches – when
dealing with the suicide of pastor Oskar Brüsewitz in 1976, who burnt
himself to death in protest against the GDR’s lack of religious freedom.
After having criticized the west German state-church-relationship in
connection with the rearmament policy in 1983, in 1984/85 BEK Chairman
Bishop Johannes Hempel could even speak of a “fundamental trust” existing
between church and state in the GDR. However,
soon after Hempel’s summit meeting with Honecker in mid-February 1985, the
tensions between state and church grew stronger again, because of the
opposition groups who gathered on the fringes of the churches, and the
repressions directed against them. But still, leading members of the BEK
stood up for a democratically renewed but now as before socialist GDR even
after the fall of 1989.

In contrast to the Protestants, the Catholic Church had kept a clear distance
from the SED state until 1974. Despite the bishops’ resistance, Pope
Paul VI opted for a policy of détente in 1974. In 1976, an independent
Berlin Board of Bishops was founded. However, the separation from west German
Catholicism, which was already planned, was not in the end made due to the
election of a new pope. John Paul II was, in his turn, a decided adversary
of the Eastern bloc.

The division of the Protestant Church in Germany

Against the background of the Cold War, the SED (Socialist Unity Party)
regime in Eastern Germany tried to force the eastern member churches to
leave the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany), the VELKD (Union of Lutheran
Churches) and the EKU (United Churches formerly in Prussia). The treaty
signed by the EKD and the western Federal Republic of Germany in 1957
concerning pastoral care in the armed forces was the occasion for the
German Democratic Republic (GDR) to demand a division of these organisations. The GDR’s state secretariat for
church questions, led by Hans Seigewasser and founded on April 1st,
1957, received orders to keep in touch only with the eight churches
existing within the boundaries of the GDR from then on. On May 17, 1958,
GDR Prime Minister Otto Grotewohl cut diplomatic contacts to the EKD’s
appointee for the GDR, Heinrich Grüber. In 1962, one year after the
building of the Berlin Wall, the Conference of Governing Bodies of the
Protestant Churches in GDR (abbreviated as KKL – Konferenz der
Kirchenleitungen), instituted its own office in East Berlin, which was run
by a young church lawyer, Manfred Stolpe. In 1967, the Politburo of the
communist SED party which ruled East Germany, insisted on the existence of
two divided German nations and refused any legitimacy to a “pan-German”
Protestant Church organisation (EKD). In the same year, the EKD synod
sitting in Fürstenwalde refused to accede to the GDR government’s demand
for dividing and possibly disbanding the EKD. However, the Protestant
Student Communities (Evangelische Studentengemeinden, ESG) and the Work
Group of Protestant Youth (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der evangelischen Jugend,
AEJ) split in 1967. One of the causes, next to structural impediments to
any work in common, was the one-sided political indoctrination of young people.

However, against the background of the new Constitution of the GDR established in 1968, Bishop Moritz Mitzenheim of Thuringia declared on February 29, 1968: “The state boundaries of GDR
also constitute the limits for an organisation of the churches.” Without
any prior consultation with their western partner churches, the eastern churches
belonging to the VELKD (Union of Lutheran Churches) left this organisation
in order to form the separate VELKDDR in 1968. In 1969 there followed the
founding of the Federation of Protestant Churches in the GDR (Bund der
Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR, BEK), an organisation totally independent
from the (western) EKD. The official recognition of the BEK by the SED-state did not however occur until
February 24, 1971. A reason for this delay may have been article 4, paragraph 4 of the
Constitution of the BEK, which stated: “The Federation acknowledges a
special union of the entire Protestant Christianity in Germany.” As a kind of contradiction
to this affirmation of unity, attempts were made to give theological
reasons for this institutional detachment from the EKD. A peculiar interpretation
of the theological theories proposed by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
as well as of the so-called “Darmstädter Wort”, the Declaration of
Darmstadt of 1947 which acknowledged the mistakes made by the Protestant
churches during the Third Reich, served this purpose. In addition to the
slogans “church for the others” and “community of witness and service”, the
ambivalent expression “church within Socialism” was used. When trying to
shape a theological profile of the BEK, the theologians in question
profited from differing concepts of what is a church, as could be seen in
the rival views expressed in German Protestantism since 1949. The BEK saw
itself more and more as the true “Confessing Church,” which however was being
scorned by the West. Some theologians from the Federal Republic and from
the ecumenical movement agreed with this estimation, thus reinforcing this
self-assessment. In this view, the western EKD seemed a rich
façade-organisation bound to capitalism and militarism, preserving only a few
spiritual qualities.

Yet at the same time, there remained substantial ties between the east and
west branches of the EKD. The western EKD continued to give strong
financial and manifold support to its sister organisation. In a variety of
ways, the western churches subsidized their eastern partners, despite these
differences of political view, often openly expressed. For example, in
order to promote such closer relations, both at the parish and regional
levels, a so-called “advisory board”, consisting of members of both
federations, was instituted in 1969, followed by an additional “consultation board” in 1980.
The protocols of their meetings document the ambivalence of closeness and
at the same time a growing estrangement. Despite this, subsidies both for
the maintenance of partner parishes, as well as for building costs, and
even for the “rescue” of church personnel in danger from the GDR’s secret
police, were paid by the western churches to the GDR

Plans for a reform of the state churches and for the formation of a
“United Protestant Church of the GDR” (Vereinigte Evangelische Kirche in
der DDR, VEK), which had been proposed since the end of the 1970s, failed
due to the opposition of some individual state churches. But this discussion led to a
self-dissolution of the VELKDDR. After the end of the GDR in 1989, some
representatives of EKD and BEK declared their wish for a re-unification of
state and church in the Loccum declaration of January 17, 1990. On the
other side, some left-wing church representatives sought to present an
alternative strategy, as expressed, for example, in the “Berlin Declaration” of February 9, 1990. Nevertheless
these opinions were ignored and the re-unification process took place
faster than expected. It was basically completed by June 1991

.On the History of a Change: Church within Socialism

The re-organisation of the eight eastern state churches in the Federation
of Protestant Churches in the GDR (BEK) at the end of the 1960s was
followed by a theological “reconsideration.” Its result was the ambiguous
expression: “a church within socialism.” This expression seemed ideal as a
central category of an ecclesiological theory, because it allowed
different self- and exterior descriptions and thus enabled both the SED
state and the churches to follow a flexible policy. However, this undefined
expression was motivated and limited by the (contemporary) historical and
ideological frame set by the “first German socialist” constitution of 1968.
The state secretary for church questions in the GDR, Hans Seigewasser,
proclaimed the principle that the church policy had to submit itself to
“general politics for the benefit of a full development of the socialist
human society.” Although some theologians (H. J. Fränkel) expressed a
substantial critique of the expression “socialist” and of its actual
meaning under the GDR-dictatorship, the Conference of Governing Bodies of
the Protestant Churches in the GDR declared on February 15, 1968: “As
citizens of a socialist state, we face the task of manifesting socialism as
a more just form of co-existence.” This self-assessment was regarded as an
important phase on the “path” towards a “learning process.” There had
already been some “road markers” before. For example, a common declaration
of state and church in 1958 stated: “They [that is, the Christians in the
GDR] respect the development towards socialism and contribute to a peaceful
establishment of everyday life.” In his formulation on the “foundations of
the relationship of state and church” of 1962, Manfred Stolpe, the
architect of the BEK, had already used the expression “church within
socialism” when describing this relationship. The concept of socialism was
definitely integrated in the church’s teachings during the Federal Synod of
Eisenach in 1971. From then on, many BEK-theologians adopted this
propagandistic key expression from their political-social surroundings
without reflecting that, within the structure taught by the communist SED,
it was granted metaphysical qualities. By doing this, they did not put the
spiritual autonomy of the church at the center of their ecclesiology, but
instead a semantic participation in the officially established political
reality. As the social context gained a normative quality, some church
people managed to see the reality of the GDR only in a distorted way, namely
through its own official self-definition.

Protestantism in the Federal Republic was also considerably influenced by
the ideas of social democracy at that time. This gave rise to considerable
debate on the question whether Christians should be socialists. These
tendencies were motivated by a perception of guilt towards the poor and
those deprived of their rights in the past (see, for example, the Darmstadt
Declaration of 1947). Furthermore, the churches in the GDR tried to
disprove the manipulative suspicion of the state that they were acting as a
“fifth column” of the “class enemy”. Although a steady approximation of the
BEK to the terminology and semantics of the “real socialist” ideology
was undeniable, the SED state had no reason to rejoice about it, since some
BEK theologians, due to their accommodation to the socialist surroundings,
claimed that they had a right to give further impulses to the future
development of socialism. One of the protagonists of this theological
direction was the Dean of Erfurt, Heino Falcke, who against the background
of the “Theology of the Word of God” supported an “improvable [form of]
socialism” (“verbesserlicher Sozialismus”). But, such views were not shared by all.
Several theologians, as a consequence of the repressive measures taken by
the SED regime against the churches, questioned the use of the
“compromising metaphor” (G. Planer-Friedrich) “church within socialism”.
These doubters were increasingly more vocal from the beginning of 1988.
But not until the fall of 1989, was Bishop W. Leich (from Thuringia) the
first bishop to openly reject the “idea of socialism” (“Sozialismus-Begriff”).

(To be continued)

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

Dear Friends,

May I once again remind you please do NOT press the REPLY button to this
message, but to communicate to me at my personal address given at the end
on p. 10 below.

Contents:

1) Conference Report, Protestant Mentalities. Gottingen, February 2003
2) New Vatican documents unearthed
3) Book reviews

a) Goldhagen A Moral reckoning
b) Wood, Bishop John Taylor

4) Articles
5) Book notes

1) Conference Report, Göttingen, February 26-28th 2003.

At the invitation of Professor Hartmut Lehmann, Director of the Max Planck
Institute, and former Director of the German Historical Institute,
Washington, D.C., a useful three day conference was held in Göttingen at
the end of February on the topic of “Protestant Mentalities 1870-1970”.
All the sessions were plenary and were interspersed by coffee breaks and
communal meals in the building. So there was ample time for a full
exchange of views – a welcome change from so many similar meetings in North
America when the constraints of time and the pressures of alternative
sessions tend to limit the academic benefits. The predominantly male
participants were mainly younger historians from north German universities,
along with a few pastors, and, as foreign guests, Doris Bergen and Bob
Ericksen from the USA and myself from Canada.

The topic of Protestant Mentalities during the past century offered scope
for a wide range of explorations. We began with an analysis of two
seemingly contradictory, but in reality overlapping tendencies in German
Protestantism, namely the periods of euphoria (Frank Becker, Muenster) and
periods of traumatic shock (Frank-Michael Kuhlemann, Bielefeld). The
former could be seen in 1870, 1914, and 1933, when notable political events
produced strong reactions within the German Protestant churches. In 1870,
the defeat of France and Bismarck’s successful unification of the German
states were widely regarded as signs of God’s favour. The challenge from
Rome was finally settled and the Protestant destiny for northern and
central Europe secured. So too in 1914 the Protestant readiness to mobilize
support for the war effort gave a religious justification to what many
regarded as a Holy Crusade. And in 1933, the same kind of enthusiastic
support for Adolf Hitler’s new regime was widespread among all factions of
the German Evangelical Churches. In between, to be sure, there were
periods when a sense of trauma and crisis prevailed. Even before 1914, many
alert Protestants could not fail to be alarmed by the rapid growth of
sceptical humanism, which resulted in the defection of so many leading
intellectuals, as also by the failure of the church to hold the loyalty of
the urban working classes. After 1918, the catastrophic outcome of the
war disproved the clergy’s oft-repeated claims that God was on Germany’s
side. The result was a deep crisis of credibility. And the bitter
disillusionment of the second world war, and the subsequent political
division of the country, only led to an even greater sense of traumatic
loss among German Protestants. In one sense, the last fifty years have
been spent in the still unfinished task of coming to terms with these
legacies.

Matthias Pöhlmann, Berlin, outlined the organized attempts by the German
Protestant Churches to offset these trends through its educational and
propaganda activities. They met with only limited success. Doris Bergen,
Notre Dame, Indiana, gave a thoughtful analysis of War Protestantism in
both 1914 and 1939, on the basis of her study of military chaplains. She
pointed out how much the need to promote support for the war effort
distorted the preaching of the Christian gospel. The idealistic hopes that
the war would unite the population and revive their commitment to the
church proved illusory, especially since neither church nor chaplains could
offer any adequate response to the challenges of mass death.
Lucian Hölscher, Bochum, widened the discussion to tackle the whole issue
of secularization. The lack of precision in the use of the this term is
unsatisfactory, but the phenomenon is undoubted. But to what extent can
secularization be seen as an irreversible process, or even a German
development? There was room here for plenty of wide-ranging but as yet
unsettled discussion. This was followed by a novel and interesting
contribution by Rolf Schieder, Berlin, on the impact on the churches in the
1920s and 1930s of the new medium of radio broadcasting. As in England,
the authorities resolved to keep control of this in their own hands in
order to prevent either commercial exploitation or political influence.
Their aim was not, to give the German people what they wanted, but rather
what they ought to have. They maintained a high moral tone and a high
cultural standard.

The churches soon realized the advantages of this kind of high-minded
broadcasting, though some Protestants were alarmed when they learnt that
Catholic “error” would be granted equal time. But in 1940 Goebbels
suspended all religious broadcasting for the duration of the war. As an
aside, Rolf Schieder noted that the Nazis soon discovered that Adolf
Hitler’s declamatory oratory did not transfer at all well to the radio, and
presumably would have been even less successful on television if that had
existed at the time.

We had a paper from Thomas Kaufmann, Göttingen, on the two eminent
Protestant families, the Harnacks and the Seebergs, which gave an
interesting account of their differing theological and political views.
Later Bob Ericksen, Tacoma, gave an outline of the career of Wilhelm
Niemöller, the younger brother of the more famous Martin. During the 1950s,
Wilhelm became the historian of the German Church Struggle, and used his
findings very deliberately, but in the end unsuccessfully, in an attempt to
mould the post-war course of the German Evangelical Church.
Various other examples of Protestant mentalities from early 20th century
history were commented on. Certainly, from a later perspective, we need
to take a critical view of the Protestant failures to combat Nazism, or to
fulfill the mission of Christian love to fellowmen, particularly the Jews.
Or even, as one paper told us, to women, who were still being denied the
right of ordination in the Lutheran church, still placed under the
supervision of male colleagues, or even obliged to resign their posts upon
marriage, for many years after 1945. Throughout the whole century, as this
conference succeeded in showing, conservatism and nationalism were the
uppermost political influences upon Protestant mentalities. Some of the
participants obviously approved; others like me were more dubious. But in
all, under Hartmut Lehmann’s genial chairmanship, we benefited from the
profitable discussions and enjoyed his generous hospitality.
2) As part of the continuing controversy over the Vatican’s policies during
World War II, some new documentation has been found in the archive of the
diocese of Campagna, in southern Italy. Two letters referring to the aid
given on the orders of Pope Pius XII to those suffering for reasons of race
are printed in a new biography Giovanni Palatucci -Il poliziotto che salvo
migliaia de ebrei, Rome: Laurus Robuffo publishers, 2002.
This tells the story of the Italian police official in the district
of Fiume, who used his position to rescue Jews interned under Mussolini’s
racial laws. To this end, he recruited the aid of his uncle, Guiseppe
Palatucci, the Bishop of Campagna, who turned to the Vatican to ask for
support in this cause. The two replies are here given in an English
translation.

1) Secretariat of State of His Holiness
From the Vatican 3 October 1940
Your reverend Excellency,

I have submitted to the august attention of the Holy Father the request
made in your letter # 935 of September 15th on behalf of those who have
been interned.

The August Pontiff deigned to consider your request, and has ordered me to
see to it that the sum of 3000 Lire be sent to Your Excellency, which I now
do with the attached cheque drawn on the Bank of Rome.

His Holiness, in deference to the intentions of the donors, has also
charged me to make you aware that this money should preferably be destined
for those who suffer for reasons of race, and to communicate the Apostolic
Benediction, which he imparts with his whole heart to Your Excellency and
to the flock entrusted to your charge.

I am happy to carry out these august orders. And let me take this
opportunity of expressing to you my sincere feelings of esteem.

Your Excellency’s servant,
Luigi Cardinal Maglione (signed by hand)
2) From the Vatican, 29th November 1940

With regard to your letter of November 8th, seeking a new sum to be
directed for the support of Jews interned in your diocese, I am pleased to
tell Your Excellency that the Holy Father has benevolently decided that you
should be granted the extra assistance you asked for.

In keeping with this revered instruction, I am sending the enclosed cheque
for 10,000 Lire, asking Your Excellency to be good enough to send to the
Secretariat of State, when convenient, an exact, even if brief, report on
how this money was used.

I am likewise happy to tell our Excellency that His Holiness has learned
with great pleasure about the energetic charitable activities you have
undertaken. He imparts his Apostolic Benediction to you, your entire
diocese and to all those whom you are assisting.

Yours very sincerely,
G.B.Montini (signed by hand)
[Montini was the assistant to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione and
later became Pope Paul VI]

Comment: There is a possibility, but no certainty, that the reference in
the first letter to the “wishes of the donors” and the specific intention
of assisting the victims of persecution because of their race, which in
this context can only mean Jews, refers to the sum of money received as a
personal gift by the Pope in December 1939 from the United Jewish Appeal in
Chicago. This amounted to $125,000 and was sent as a gift in memory of
Pope Pius XI. It was duly and fulsomely acknowledged with thanks by the
Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago, Mgr Sheil. It is clear that the donors hoped
that the Vatican could use its influence through its local dioceses to
assist Jews in need, and also at the same time to arrange for entry visas
to Catholic countries in Latin America, so that these victims of
persecution could escape from Europe. A few days later, in January 1940,
the officials of the Secretariat of State suggested to Cardinal Maglione
that, in line with the donors’ wishes, these sums should be disbursed
without favour to both converted and non-converted Jews. Later in April,
it was reported that $50,000 had been retained in the United States for aid
there, while $30,000 had been assigned to the Raphael Society in Hamburg,
the main Catholic agency assisting emigrants to leave Germany. Some 20,000
Lire was sent to Cardinal Boetto in Genoa to help with emigration from that
port, while $10,000 was earmarked for the Archbishop of Utrecht for the
same purpose, and $3000 was to be sent to the Nuncio in Switzerland. The
balance could be used for immediate needs when requested. Mgr Montini
noted “The Holy Father has seen and approved this planned disposition.
(See Actes et document du Saint Siege relatifs a la seconde guerre
mondiale: Vol. 6: Le Saint Siege et les victimes de la guerre, Mars 1939 –
Decembre 1940, documents 125, 126 and 183.) Similarly, some months
later, when the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Innitzer, sent an urgent
appeal to the Vatican on behalf of the persecuted Jews whose fate was
becoming more dangerous, and calling for the provision of entry visas to
Brazil, the Secretariat of State replied with a gift of $2000, while
describing the minimal results of its efforts to get Brazil to open its
doors to “non-aryans”. (See Cardinal Innitzer to Pope Pius XII, 4 Feb.
1941, and Cardinal Maglione to Innitzer, 6 Feb. 1941, Actes et documents du
Saint Siege pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, Vol.8, documents 14 and 15.)
Together with the newly discovered letters from the diocese of Campagna,
this correspondence shows clearly enough that the Vatican was prepared to
assist Jews persecuted for reasons of race, though the sums available to
help were small, and their requests for entry visas for these refugees were
almost all turned down or scornfully spurned. It is not clear whether
the amounts sent were spent to help internees in the area of Bishop
Palatucci’s diocese, or whether he was forwarding these contributions to
help his nephew in Fiume, near Trieste. However, these measures do
something to refute the accusations made by Susan Zucotti in her recent
book on the fate of the Jews in Italy, and the alleged indifference of the
Vatican to their plight

.3a) Daniel J.Goldhagen, A MORAL RECKONING: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
IN THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS UNFULFILLED DUTY OF REPAIR
New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2002. 363 pp. $38.00 US. 

(This review appeared earlier in the American Jewish Congress Monthly,
November/December 2002)

Daniel Goldhagen opens with the statement that “Christianity is a religion
of love”, and then spends the next 360 pages proving just the opposite.
Principally, he insists, Christian mistreatment of the Jewish people has
destroyed any credible claim that Christians live up to the precepts of the
founder of their faith, the Jew Jesus. Instead, for centuries, the
Christian Church has displayed bigotry and intolerance towards Jews,
chiefly sponsored by its largest and longest established branch, the Roman
Catholic Church, and by each succeeding generation of leaders in the Papacy
along with its attendant bureaucracy in the Vatican. This tradition of
hatred, decimation and persecution culminated in the shocking atrocity of
the Holocaust. The deep complicity of this Church, the willing
participation of many Catholics, and the silence of the then Pope, all
point to the present need for a moral reckoning. This is what Goldhagen
seeks to deliver.

In his earlier work, published some years ago, Goldhagen demonstrated his
capacity for sweeping and provocative generalizations. On that occasion he
attempted to attribute the dynamism of the Nazi campaign against the Jews
to the incidence of “eliminationist antisemitism”among all Germans, who
differed only in degree in the virulence of their hatred of Jews. He now
claims that this assessment was purely descriptive, and that in this new
book he wants to turn to the issue of culpability.

Antisemitism led to the Holocaust. Antisemitism has been integral to the
Catholic Church. The connection has to be stressed, all the more since the
Catholic Church was established in all of the countries where the Holocaust
took place. In none of them did its leaders seek to mobilize effective
resistance to the Germans’ atrocities. Consequently, Goldhagen avers, the
Catholic Church must bear much blame. Its record cannot be excused as that
of a complicit bystander. Rather Catholicism was a deliberate and
long-standing instigator of Jew-hatred. Its culpability is therefore far
more extensive than has hitherto been admitted.

This sweeping contention is supported by no new research. Instead
Goldhagen makes use of highly selective quotations from other authors, most
of whom adopt the same pejorative viewpoints about the Catholic Church’s
record. Admittedly he attempts to cover his tracks in his Introduction. He
accepts the existence of Catholics who were not antisemites or whose
antisemitism was mild, and even some who saved Jews from death. But this
does not prevent him from subsequent wholesale condemnations of the Church,
of its doctrinal teachings, and of its leading personalities from
successive Popes downwards. His most venomous attacks, of course, are
made on the reigning Pope during the Holocaust, Pius XII, who is here
depicted as being all in favour of the Nazis’ eliminationist campaign. So
too the attitudes and policies of the Catholic leaders throughout Europe
are predictably excoriated. The German Catholic bishops protested against
the Nazis’ so-called “euthanasia” programme, but not against “the Final
Solution”. The President of Slovakia was a priest who handed over
thousands of Jews to the Germans. Most of them were promptly murdered. In
Croatia, the most fanatical antisemites were members of the Franciscan
order. And so on. Even when the Vatican intervened, this was due,
Goldhagen claims, more to the Church’s selfish political interest rather
than to compassion for the soon-to-be slaughtered Jews. In short he seeks
to prove that the Church’s widespread complicity in the mass murders of
Jews throughout Europe was due to its inherent and age-long antisemitism.
Goldhagen is not an historian, nor a sociologist, still less a theologian.
In fact he is a moralist. Having established his own idiosyncratic
standards of righteousness, he can easily enough criticize all those who do
not adhere to these archetypes. Moreover he assumes that such criteria
must be universally accepted. He shows little understanding of how
religious communities, like political organizations, develop so-called
“circles of obligation” primarily to their own members. Apathy,
disinterest, even intolerance characterize their attitudes towards
outsiders. The legacy of theological anti-Judaism amongst Catholics only
reinforced this stance. In Goldhagen’s view, the Church’s failure to stand
by the persecuted Jews was entirely a matter of moral will. Popes, bishops,
priests and laity could all have abandoned their antisemitic traditions,
and should have done so. They now stand condemned.

Paradoxically, however, Goldhagen has not entirely written off the
institution of the Catholic Church. At the end of the book, he changes his
tune to affirm that “the Catholic Church and its moral creed is, at its
core, good and admirable”. All it needs to do is to purify itself of its
antisemitic past, and to make suitable restitution to the Jewish people.
The last part of the book outlines some of the fanciful ways in which this
work of reparation could be undertaken.

It is difficult to see just for whom this work is intended. The small
handful of Catholic reformers pursuing their wishful thinking is clearly a
limited audience. More likely he seeks to appeal to the considerable
section of the Jewish community who are still searching for a single or
simplistic explanation of the disaster of the Holocaust, and are reluctant
to accept the ambiguities and complexities of the historical record.
Making a scapegoat of the Catholic Church was therefore welcome. But many
readers are likely to be sceptical of his final call for the Church to make
a full moral restitution. They may not share his optimism about such a
programme. But, Goldhagen argues, just as the Germans and their
governments since 1945 have purged themselves of their eliminationist
antisemitism by a deliberate mustering of the will, so the Catholic Church
could and should now follow suit.

This is indeed the moralist’s solution. But his suggestions for church
reform are too extraordinary to be adopted. And by denigrating the steps
already taken by the Vatican and other church bodies over the past thirty
years as too little and too late, he belittles the whole process of
Jewish-Christian reconciliation. Using the Holocaust as a moral cudgel to
beat Catholics over the head is hardly likely to bring about the goal
Goldhagen supposedly seeks. In fact, his extreme stance may possibly lead
to a revival of the antisemitism which he so rightly and energetically
deplores.
JSC

b) David Wood, Poet, Priest and Prophet – Bishop John V. Taylor, London:
Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, 2002, ISBN 0-85169-272-9, £ 14.95,
with a Foreword by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales.

(This review appeared first in CONNECTIONS, a Review of the UK Churches’
Commission on Mission)

Among British Christians in the 20th century, John Vernon Taylor, who died
in January 2001, was undoubtedly one of the great saints and thinkers. For
me it was a high privilege to have had a fair amount to do with him,
professionally – and inevitably, through that, personally – over some 40
years, from an early reading of his 1957 Penguin Christianity and Politics
in Africa, through several inspiring encounters with him as Africa and then
General Secretary of the CMS, learning much from, and greatly enjoying his
successive books, as well as in significant episodes at major conferences of
the WCC, in welcoming him into an Honorary Fellowship at the Selly Oak
Colleges, and above all in Oxford these last 5 years, sharing as a neighbour
alike in the service to celebrate 60 years of married love with Peggy and,
too soon after, in the funeral service to which John in no little pain had
devoted his unique combination of inter-human sensitivity, God-directed
faith and winsome poetry – ‘every word’, said Peggy, ‘except those of the
preacher, written by John’.

This large, rich and reasonably priced study of John Taylor’s living,
believing, serving and exploring deserves many readers among those who have
known him, and still more among those who may have heard no more than a
phrase – ‘the go-between God’, most likely, or perhaps ‘enough is enough’ –
or of his inspiring leadership as Bishop of Winchester from 1974-85. It is
a generous treasure house. For me, above all for the poems, virtually none
of which I had come across before, not least the two – of some six or seven
he had been struggling to perfect in his last few days of earthly life –
first read aloud at his memorial service in Winchester Cathedral (p.182).
Hardly less for the amazingly profound feast of theological insight and
pilgrimage in which the Australian author passionately accompanies John
through the major stages and discoveries of his life.

The first chapter takes us immediately into the debate about the nature of
mission between such giants as Hendrik Kraemer, Max Warren, Lesslie Newbigin
and David Bosch, with the subsequently oft recurring struggle to find the
appropriate way for Christians to relate in friendship and respect with
people of other faith communities. So also the last, 40 page long chapter
is a sustained exploration into how John’s writings from his first book to
his last, including his three great ‘classics’ The Primal Vision – Christian
Presence amid African Religion (1963), The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit
and the Christian Mission (1972), and The Christlike God (1992), all centre
on how the nature, purposes and characteristic behaviour of the
ever-mysterious God are factually, historically revealed and to be known and
followed in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, recognised as the Christ.
The chapters in between include other substantial theological explorations,
whether in the account of what Bonhoeffer’s writings meant to John in the
bleak months after his wholly unplanned and unwelcome return from Africa to
Britain in the mid-1950s (p.51ff.), his moving exposition of the shapes and
meanings of the Chapel of the Living Water in the new offices the CMS staff
moved into in 1966 (p.98ff.), or the theme of humble and serving presence as
the key, characteristic mark of true Christlike mission (p.127f., 212f.).

As an ‘intellectual biography’, a term Wood more or less borrows from
Kenneth Cragg (see p.12ff.), in which the author himself is exploring no
less excitedly and devotedly than his teacher, the book includes sensitive
accounts of the disappointments and difficulties involved in the return from
Africa, as of several unusual features of John’s way of being a diocesan
bishop, some of them rather less than ‘successful’ (p.151ff.) and of his
long, deeply rewarding relationship with Max Warren, his mentor from
Cambridge student days onward and predecessor as CMS General Secretary.
At the same time I cannot but remark on several important – and at least to
me dismaying – gaps in the record. One is that of some of the exact dates:
neither that of the beginning of his time at Mukono, Uganda (while the
Second World War was still raging), nor that of his sad departure from there
is chronicled; a small gap perhaps yet which adds an unnecessary impression
of vagueness quite unlike John or Peggy ! More acute is that of any account
of his later work in and for Africa; we learn not a little of the theology
set out in The Primal Vision, but no more than a brief factual mention of
the months spent in research for his two big books: The Growth of the Church
in Buganda (1958) and Christians of the Copperbelt (1961). Still more
worrying is the absence of African names: neither the Index, nor the
Bibliography, nor the long list of people whose help is acknowledged by the
author include names of African Christians and writers who John must have
known and appreciated – not even that of John Mbiti. I suspect that in the
long run this book will be known as the ‘white, Anglo-Saxon’ view of John
Taylor !

Again, as one who knew something, if by no means all, of his profoundly
important contributions over many years to the life and work of the World
Council of Churches, it is surprising, to put it mildly, that none of these
are carefully described. A few lines on p.69/70, seriously inaccurate as
well as wholly inadequate, mention the project ‘World Studies of Churches in
Mission’ to which John contributed enormously, alike at its outset in 1954
by writing a long and impressive memo outlining what was to become a major,
innovative and still echoing set of studies, and at its ‘completion’ as a
member of the 5-person team struggling in 1968/9 towards their revolutionary
conclusions that have been far too widely ignored. These centre on what God
can have meant by the virtually ungraspable diversity of the ‘results’ of
mission in the 15 different situations studied, in which John’s by then
strong faith in the never-fully-graspable purposes of the God who is known
in Jesus is all too recognisable in the team’s intriguing report Can
Churches Be Compared ? His vital, reconciling role at the WCC’s tumultuous
Uppsala Assembly of 1968 is briefly summarised from John’s own published
account (p.108), yet without adequate attention to the virulence of the
disagreements in the background, let alone to the subsequent history of
those disputes, while his magisterial, thoroughly down to earth and
profoundly challenging paper to the Melbourne World Mission Conference of
1980 on the relation of Church to Kingdom in God’s purposes is no more than
a line in the list of his writings (pp.254-6).

So while I look forward to a later volume that can bring out these other
dimensions of the life and witness of a significant twentieth century
church leader, there is plenty for us all to be learning from this one.
Martin Conway, Oxford

4) Articles a) ed B.Kosmala, and C Schoppmann, Uberleben im Untergrund.
(Solidarität und Hilfe für Juden während der NS-Zeit, Bd 5) Berlin:
Metropol Verlag 2002.
Two articles in this collection of essays describing how some Jews were
able to survive in hiding during the period 1941-1945 will be of interest
to our readers.

Ursula Büttner, who teaches history at Hamburg University contributes a
chapter on “Die andere Christen”, which pays tribute to those Christians,
both Catholic and Protestant, as well as some from the smaller sects, who
risked their own lives to give shelter and protection to Jews in need.
Angela Borgstedt, of the University of Karlsruhe, describes the rescue
efforts in south-west Germany, as organized by a valiant group of pastors
in the Confessing Church, and by Gertrud Luckner from her base in Freiburg
until her arrest in March 1943.

b) Peter Gemeinhardt, Krisis der Gechichte – Krisis der
Kirchengeschichtschreibung. Kirchengeschichte nach dem ersten Weltkrieg auf
der Suche nach ihrem Grund und Gegenstand in Zeitschrift für
Kirchengeschichte, Vol 113, no. 2, 2002, 210-236.

A very useful description of the various kinds of church history being
written in the aftermath of the defeat of 1918. Gemeinhardt concentrates on
three major church historians: the traditionalists, such as Harnack; the
theologians, such as Karl Barth; and the nationalists, such as Karl Holl,
the leader of the Luther renaissance. This analysis of the strengths and
weaknesses of each approach shows that the divisions within the ranks of
the scholarly community reflected the dissonance in the wider community,
and the impact of the war on the credibility of the whole profession.
c) Kevin Spicer, Fr A.Heuberger: Misshapen agent of God in the Third Reich,
New England Journal of History, Vol. 59, no.1, Fall 2002. This article
examines the career of a pro-Nazi Catholic priest, one of about 150 in all,
and analyses his motives. In most of these cases a desire to enhance their
self-importance, and quarrels with their ecclesiastical superiors led to
their pronounced political views. But they gained little support from the
Nazi Party authorities, and were sidelined by their own bishops. After
the war they were often able to have their past extremism overlooked.

4) Book notes:

A revised and expanded second edition of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical
Movement has recently been published by the World Council of Churches
Publications, Geneva. This is an essential reference work for all
interested in the growth and development of the ecumenical movement during
the last century.

At the moment this is only available in English, but other language
editions are in process.

With very best wishes,
John Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,
May I remind you once again that any reply you send to the address:
kirzeit-l@interchange.ubc.ca will go out to all 370 members around the
world. This should therefore be used only for notifications of general
interest to all the members. If you wish to get in touch with me directly,
then please use my own address = jconway@interchange.ubc.ca
This will then prevent “spam” from cluttering up other members’ mailboxes.
My apologies to those of you who received unwanted or unintended mail.
Of course, I should add that I am very glad to hear from any of you with
your comments on the contents of these Newsletters.
Contents:

1) Archbishop Williams’ Dimbleby Lecture
2) Conference Report: Lessons and Legacies, Minneapolis
3) Book reviews:

a) Griech-Polelle, Bishop von Galen
b) Voigt, Villa Emma

4) Articles
5) Short Notices
1) In December, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered
a most stimulating public lecture on the present situation of the relations
between the individual and the state in western democracies, which raised
important moral issues. It deserves to be read as a significant
contribution from the side of a leading churchman. For the full text see:
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/acns/articles/32/25/acns3236.html

2) From November 1-4, 2002, the Lessons and Legacies conference on the
Holocaust met at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. This was the
seventh Lessons and Legacies conference, and like the first six, it
featured a program packed with scholars from the United States, Canada,
Europe, and Israel. The roundtables, panels, and workshops were roughly
organized around a broad theme, “The Holocaust in International
Perspective.” In keeping with that focus, one of the three plenary speakers
and an entire panel were devoted to the role of the churches in the Holocaust.

According to the program, Michael Marrus of the University of Toronto was
scheduled to speak on “Looking for a New Approach: The Vatican as Neutral.”
Instead, Professor Marrus decided to respond to Daniel Goldhagen’s new
book, _A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust
and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair_. With characteristic wit and
thoroughness, Marrus proceeded to take apart Goldhagen’s work, which he
described as simplistic, misinformed, and detrimental to the cause of
understanding the complex past (and present) of the Vatican. It was a
compelling and spirited presentation, which led at least one person at my
table to remark that Professor Marrus must be a deeply committed Catholic
to feel so strongly about Pius XII. Michael would probably be surprised at
that observation, but it is a useful reminder of the (often misleading)
assumptions people tend to make about scholars of religion. Although almost
everyone in the room seemed to share Marrus’s critical view of Goldhagen,
some of those present were disturbed at the sharp tone of the speech.

Another large crowd–perhaps 200 people–gathered the next day for a panel
titled “Current Discussions on the Role of the Christian Churches in the
Holocaust.” Michael Marrus chaired the session, and Suzanne Brown-Fleming
from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; Bob Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran
University; and Michael Phayer from Marquette University presented papers.
Each of the three speakers seemed to understand their charge somewhat
differently, which made for an unusual but also very interesting session.
Brown-Fleming spoke on recent scholarship on the Catholic Church and the
Holocaust. Her thorough and well organized historiographical presentation
showed how much exciting work has been done in the field. At the same time,
it seemed from her talk that somehow the cumulative effect of all the
research tends to make things look worse and worse for the Vatican. Suzanne
ended with some insights from her own project on Bishop Aloisius Muench
that led her to the simple yet powerful conclusion that the Catholic church
during the Holocaust was an institution “more human than divine.”

Bob Ericksen followed with a very different presentation. Rather than an
historiographical survey of scholarship on the Protestant Churches,
Ericksen gave a personal account of what he sees as some persistent
theological and moral problems in the field. He based his reflections on a
recent conference he hosted at Pacific Lutheran on “Christian Teachings
About Jews in the Shadow of the Holocaust.” (John Conway reported on that
event in this newsletter). Observations at that meeting, Bob told us,
reminded him of how far we still had to go toward a historical scholarship
that promotes Christian-Jewish understanding rather than asserting
Christian triumphalism/supercessionism or perpetuating old antisemitic
stereotypes. Ericksen gave a number of examples to illustrate his points:
for example, he described the situation of one scholar, whose decision to
research Christian antisemitism met with a punitive response from
superiors. He also offered some grounds for optimism, however, not the
least important of which (in the opinion of this reporter) is his own
level-headed contribution to the field.

Michael Phayer chose to use his time to present some of his recent research
on Vatican finances. Less intensely personal than either of the two
presentations that preceded him, Phayer’s richly empirical paper offered a
hint of where he is going with his next book. The charge of
oversimplification that Marrus leveled against Goldhagen certainly does not
apply to Phayer, whose material was as complicated as one might expect
Vatican finances in the 1930s and ’40s to have been. In this case too,
however, it seems clear that more information–and more complexity–are
likely to reveal additional problematic aspects of the Vatican’s past.
Doris Bergen, Notre Dame

3)Book reviews:
a) Beth A. Griech-Polelle, Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and
National Socialism. (New Haven: Yale University Press. 2002. Pp. 259.
$35.00)

Bishop of Münster from October 1933 until his death in March 1946, five
weeks after receiving a cardinal’s hat from Pope Pius XII, von Galen is
described in the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche thus: “A conservative
Catholic, von Galen initially regarded the Nazi regime as acceptable at
the start of his episcopate. Very soon, however, he became an open
opponent of its totalitarianism and violations of justice. Called ‘Lion
of Münster’ for his three dramatic sermons against the suppression of
religious houses and the dispersal of their inhabitants, and the killing
of the mentally ill, preached in 1941 at the height of Hitler’s military
victories, von Galen defended the German people after the war against
the charge of collective guilt.”

Beth A.Griech-Polelle believes that this assessment overstates her
subject’s achievement. “I do not dispute”, she writes, “that von Galen
was a symbol of what was possible in the way of resistance under the
Third Reich.” She charges, however, that von Galen protested only when
church interests were at stake; that he never encouraged others to
resist the regime, let alone to mount a revolution (a charge repeated
six times over); and that he did nothing to help Jews.

Many of the primary sources for Galen’s career were lost in wartime
bombing. The secondary literature is in German. Griech-Polelle
deserves credit for having read this material, for archival research in
Germany, and for having written the first scholarly study of von Galen
in English. Unfortunately her understanding of the evidence is faulty;
and her interpretation of it demonstrably false at crucial points.
She appears to lack an insider’s familiarity with things Catholic. How
else to explain the book’s title: “Bishop” rather than “Cardinal”?
(She mistakenly awards this title to the papal Nuncio in Berlin, Cesare
Orsenigo, a bent reed from whom Pius XII withheld the customary red
hat.) She mistranslates Paul’s words on the church as the body of
Christ (1 Cor. 12:26) in order to criticize a sermon von Galen preached
on this text in 1938. The public reception of von Galen in Münster’s
Cathedral Square on March 16, 1946, following his return from Rome, was
not “his last Mass.” It was not a Mass at all, simply his last public
appearance. And it is untrue that Galen’s “canonization process was
officially closed in 1987.” The process of beatification (the
necessary prelude to canonization) is ongoing.

The charge that von Galen protested only to defend church institutions
cannot withstand close inspection. His protest against the killing of
the mentally ill had nothing to do with church interests. Moreover, it
directly contradicts the author’s charge that “von Galen lost sight of
the larger, more humane questions involved in the brutality of the Nazi
regime.” His protest against the suppression of religious houses, the
subject of the first two of von Galen’s three sermons in the summer of
1941, was concerned not with buildings but with people. What moved von
Galen, a deeply emotional man who is reported to have wept as he uttered
these denunciations, was the sudden expulsion from their homes of people
he revered for their decades of selfless service: nuns, religious
priests and brothers – especially Jesuits, “my teachers [in Innsbruck],
tutors and friends, [to whom] I remain bound in love and gratitude until
my last breath.”

That von Galen encouraged passive but not active resistance, let alone
insurrection, is manifest. He expressed this forcefully in the
rhetorically brilliant metaphor which runs like a golden thread through
the second of his three sermons. “We are the anvil, not the hammer!
… The object which is forged on the anvil receives its shape not alone
from the hammer but also from the anvil. … Become hard! Remain firm!
If it is sufficiently tough and firm and hard, the anvil usually lasts
longer than the hammer.”

Only a person utterly unfamiliar with life under a totalitarian regime
which rules by ruthless terror, and unable to imagine such conditions,
could criticize a leader for failing to encourage open rebellion in such
circumstances. In Nazi Germany active resistance, however modest, meant
immediate arrest, usually death. The Catholic Church honors martyrdom.
It does not encourage it.

A newly published book by Sebastian Haffner, a young anti-Nazi jurist
who emigrated to England for political reasons in 1938, shows vividly
how limited were the possibilities for resistance to Hitler as early as
1933. Published in English in 2002 under the title Resisting Hitler,
the book was written in 1939 and discovered only after Haffner’s death
in 1999. Anyone unconvinced of the effectiveness of Nazi terror by
Haffner’s testimony should read that of an actual martyr to Hitler:
Count Helmut von Moltke, hanged in Berlin in January 1945 for organizing
the “Kreisau Circle” which discussed building a better Germany after
Hitler’s defeat. In a wartime letter to a friend in England von Moltke
described the virtual impossibility of resistance in wartime Germany:
inability to communicate by telephone, post, or messenger; the danger of
speaking openly even to trusted friends (who might be arrested and
tortured); the exhaustion of people whose energies were fully occupied
with the ordinary tasks of day-to-day survival; nineteen guillotines
executing an estimated fifty people daily, the relatives cowed into
silence for fear of suffering the same fate. (Cf. Beate Ruhm von Oppen
[ed.], Letters to Freya 1939- 1945 [New York, Knopf: 1990], pp.
281-290.)

It is tempting to think that if the German bishops had acted together
things would have been different. Griech-Polelle cites a comment to
this effect by Konrad Adenauer in 1946. “I believe that if all the
bishops had together made public statements from the pulpits on a
particular day, they could have prevented a great deal.” From March
1933, however, Adenauer refused all contact with opponents of the
regime. His biographer writes: “Adenauer respected the courage of those
who opposed the Nazis, but not their prudence. His ice-cold realism was
confirmed by the history of the opposition from 1938 to 1944.”
(Hans-Peter Schwarz, Adenauer. Der Aufstieg: 1876-1952 [Stuttgart:
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1986] p. 408.) If the bishops could not count
on a staunch anti-Nazi Catholic like Adenauer, where was their support
to come from?

Like Pius XII, von Galen confronted the agonizing dilemma of knowing
that the price of any protest he might launch would be paid by others.
The Nazis preferred to go after the “little people,” rather than their
leaders. “The fact that he was never interrogated or arrested … after
delivering the sermons,” Griech-Polelle writes, “suggests that [von
Galen] could have risked more.” That is hindsight. Contemporaries
testified that von Galen expected arrest: he mentioned the possibility
in his first sermon. He also reckoned with the possibility of
martyrdom. Griech-Polelle herself reports that people were executed for
the mere crime of distributing copies of von Galen’s sermons. How many
more might have died had he “risked more”?

The book’s treatment of Vatican policy is seriously deficient.
Griech-Polelle garbles the chronology of the 1933 Concordat negotiations
and errs in saying that the treaty made Rome “the first legal partner to
Hitler’s regime.” That honor belongs to the Soviet Union, which
concluded a trade agreement with Hitler two months before the Concordat.
The claim that Pius XI’s 1937 encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, in the
drafting of which von Galen had a hand, “contained no outright
condemnation of anti-Semitism” is seriously misleading. It contained an
outspoken condemnation of Nazi racial doctrines; and no one was in any
doubt about their target – least of all the Nazis, who unleashed a
furious persecution of those who had printed and distributed the
document. Almost half the copies were circulated in the diocese of
Münster, a fact which is hard to explain if its bishop was indifferent
to the persecution of Jews. Griech-Polelle herself concedes that von
Galen “protested the racism of the Nazis” as early as January 1934.
It is of course true that none of the German bishops mounted the
defense of Jews which we today, with knowledge of the Holocaust, would
wish. Von Galen, with his episcopal cousin von Preysing in Berlin,
tried to move the bishops to say more, but without success. For the
Nazis, on the other hand, whose propaganda constantly portrayed the
bishops, as well as Pacelli in Rome, as traitorous and shameless
supporters of the “international Jewish conspiracy,” the bishops said
far too much.

If von Galen “refused [in 1942] to believe the unconfirmed reports of
mass murder,” he was in good company. Even after the deportation from
Holland of over 15,000 Jews, the Jewish Council in Amsterdam refused to
believe eye-witness accounts of mass murder by people who had been in
Auschwitz, and dismissed BBC reports of such killings as “anti-German
propaganda.” (Cf. Louis de Jong, “Die Niederlande und Auschwitz”, in:
Vierteljahreshefte f. Zeitgeschichte 17/1 [Jan. 1969] 1-16.)

The book’s treatment of Pius XII is especially faulty. Griech-Polelle
accepts uncritically the black legend of the Pope’s “silence” in the
face of the Holocaust. She gives a totally false account of a papal
letter to Bishop von Preysing of Berlin on September 30, 1941.
Griech-Polelle translates the Pope’s words as follows: “We emphasize
that, because the Church in Germany is dependent upon your public
behavior … in public declarations you are duty bound to exercise
restraint.” She continues: “He continued his admonishment by claiming
that although bishops such as von Galen who championed the things of God
and the Holy Church would always have his support, he nevertheless
‘require[d] you and your colleagues not to protest.'” The Pope said
nothing of the kind.

The letter said that von Galen’s recently delivered three sermons had
given the Pope “more consolation and satisfaction than we have felt for
a long time.” Such forceful protests by the bishops in Germany were
especially important, the Pope wrote, “since the very difficult and
often conflicted general political situation requires the head of the
whole Church [i.e. the Pope, not the German bishops!] to exercise
reserve in his public statements.” (Cf. Burkhart Schneider [ed.], Die
Briefe Pius XII. an die deutschen Bischöfe 1939-1944 [Mainz:
Matthias-Grünewald, 1966] 155; emphasis supplied.)
Far from requiring the German bishops “not to protest”, as
Griech-Polelle claims, Pius XII explained in a letter to von Preysing of
April 30, 1943, that he must leave it to bishops with knowledge of the
local situation to decide whether protests would do more harm than good.
(Cf. Schneider, op. cit.. 240.) Griech- Polelle’s suggestion that von
Galen’s red hat may have been given him in part for “adopting the pope’s
priorities and curbing his own behavior after the 1941 denunciations” is
totally without foundation. The honor, unprecedented in Münster as in
Berlin (whose bishop received the hat in the same consistory with von
Galen) was Pius XII’s accolade for two bishops whom he deeply admired
for their courage in speaking the truth to tyrannical power in Germany’s
darkest hour.

Coming less than a year after the war’s conclusion, the creation of
three German cardinals in February 1946 was also the Pope’s reminder to
the world of “another Germany” which, despite the crimes committed in
her name by criminals who had declared war on their country’s historic
Christian values, still deserved an honorable place in the company of
nations. Both Pius XII and von Galen rejected the notion of collective
guilt. In Catholic teaching guilt is always personal. It was this
truth which inspired the Second Vatican Council to declare that “neither
all Jews indiscriminately at that time [of Jesus’ death], nor Jews
today, can be charged with the crimes committed during [Christ’s]
passion.” (Nostrae aetate 4.)

One is reluctant to criticize so severely the work of a young scholar
just embarked on her career. To have one’s first book published by a
prestigious university press is no small achievement. Would the same
publisher, or any other major house, have accepted her manuscript had it
been favorable to von Galen? One may be permitted a doubt.
Like the Pope who gave him his red hat, von Galen was a man of his
times, limited in a hundred ways by his upbringing and experience of
life in a world already in its death throes when Hitler became Germany’s
Chancellor on January 30, 1933. An aristocrat imbued with the
traditions of nineteenth-century nationalism, von Galen shared the
widespread horror of German conservatives at the political disorder and
social licentiousness of the Weimar republic. Like most of his fellow
bishops, von Galen found it difficult to believe (as von Preysing told
friends after Hitler’s seizure of power in 1933) that their country was
“in the hands of criminals and fools.” (Cited from Walter Adolph,
Kardinal Preysing und zwei Diktaturen [Berlin: Morus-Verlag, 1971] p.
16.) Even when the evidence for von Preysing’s words could no longer
be denied, von Galen still tried to show that he was a patriotic
German. Griech-Polelle herself gives many examples. As late as March
31, 1945, when American troops entered Münster, von Galen could still
speak of “this day of shame, when the enemy enters our city.”

The remarkable thing is not that von Galen’s resistance was “selective”
(as Griech-Polelle says), but that a man who continued as bishop to
mourn the disappearance of the patriarchal and authoritarian world of
his youth could mount the resistance that he did. The spectacle of von
Galen’s towering six foot seven inch figure thundering from the pulpit
on July 13, 1941, “Wir fordern Gerechtigkeit (We demand justice)” –
knowing that he could be carried off that same night to a concentration
camp and death – will always command respect.

Perhaps the best judgment on von Galen may be the one said to have been
pronounced on Pius XII by his longtime German secretary, Fr. Robert
Leiber SJ: “Grande si, santo no.”
John Jay Hughes. St. Louis
b) Klaus Voigt, Villa Emma. Jüdische Kinder aud der Flucht 1940-1945
(Solidarität und Hilfe für Juden während der NS-Zeit, Bd 6)
Berlin; Metropol Verlag 2002. 384 pp

This is a chapter of Holocaust history with a happy ending. Klaus Voigt’s
account of how some eighty Jewish teenagers escaped the Nazis’ clutches
while fleeing across half-a-dozen countries is not only a first-rate piece
of research. It isalso gripping. Will they manage to elude capture?
How will they all succeed in crossing the border, wading through the river
in the middle of the night? Will they be able to find shelter, or will
they be sent back into the Nazis’ arms? How will they be treated by the
local inhabitants?

Voigt describes the war-time fortunes of this group of Zionist youth
from Germany and Austria, first recruited in 1939 to be part of a youth
“aliyah’. They reached Zagreb by the end of 1940, but were denied entry
certificates to Palestine by the British Mandate, and were caught in
Yugoslavia by the German invasion. They first took refugee in a remote
hunting lodge in western Slovenia which fortunately was in the Italian zone
of military occupation. From there they were brought by Italian Jewish aid
groups to a dilapidated mansion on the outskirts of a small town near
Modena in the Po valley.

This was the Villa Emma, which forms the centre piece of Voigt’s
story, largely because of a splendidly preserved cache of documents held by
the Jewish community in Modena. He sticks closely to his sources, amplified
by survivors’ testimonies, and produces a vivid picture of these refugees’
situation. For sixteen months the young people lived as best they could
in war-time circumstances, all the while being trained as potential members
of a Zionist ‘kibbuz’, learning Iwrith and Italian, as well as their future
trades as farmers or carpenters. The Italian authorities treated them
favourably.

All this changed on September 7th 1943, when Italy changed sides.
The leader of the group, a young Croatian Zionist, instantly recognized the
danger. If the Germans took over, the children’s fate might well be
deportation and death. In this emergency he turned to the local priest and
asked for sanctuary in the town’s Seminary. It was readily granted. Within
minutes, the Villa Emma was emptied. The priests hid the boys in the high
school dormitory, whose pupils were fortunately still on holiday. The nuns
took care of most of the girls. And thirty other local families –
presumably all Catholics – were willing to take in the rest of these Jewish
children, not knowing what the consequences might be. The Germans indeed
arrived, but were preoccupied in hunting down partisans or escaped
prisoners-of-war, not kids, even Jewish ones.

This gave time for preparations to smuggle the whole group across the
frontier to Switzerland near Lugano. By the end of October 1943, they had
all, except one boy left behind in hospital, gained refuge in Switzerland,
and eighteen months later reached Haifa on board a Spanish freighter. But
they all fondly remembered the Villa Emma outside Nonantola and the
assistance so generously extended to them as a gesture of Christian
friendship by the priests, nuns and parishioners of this memorable small town.
The book’s story and its message clearly deserves to be made into a film
along the lines of Pierre Sauvage’s notable account of a similar rescue
effort at Le Chambon in southern France. Highly recommended to all who
read German.

4)Articles:

Stewart Stehlin, New York University, has recently contributed “Päpstliche
Diplomatie im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Pius XII, Deutschland und die Juden” in
Eichstätter Universitätsreden, Bd 109. This is a German text of a lecture
on the same theme which he delivered to the Pontifical University of the
Angelicum in Rome. In this paper, Stehlin defends Pius XII from some of
his detractors by concentrating on the political factors which affected the
options available to the Vatican at such a perilous time. At the same time
he warns his readers not to indulge in the dangerous practice of looking at
historical events through the wrong end of the telescope, or of making
anachronistic ethical judgments.

Patrick Porter, Oxford, has published an article on “The Sacred Service:
Australian Military Chaplains and the Great War” in War and Society, Vol.
20, no. 2, October 2002.

Shannon Ty Bontrager contributed “The Imagined Crusade: The Church of
England and the Mythology of Nationalism and Christianity during the Great
War” in Church History, Vol 71, no 4 (December 2002), p774 ff. This
traces the Church’s various attempts during the period 1910-20 to reverse
the trend towards de-Christianization (or secularization), and the
pejorative impact of the Great War on such endeavours. Since Bontrager is
a graduate student at Georgia State University, this is a most encouraging
beginning.

Xenia Dennen, The dissident movement and Soviet Christians in “Humanitas.
The Journal of the George Bell Institute” (Queen’s College, Birmingham,
UK), Vol 4 no 1, 7-58. This full report on the relationship between the
political dissidents of the former Soviet Union and their Christian
sympathizers makes clear that both groups were linked by a fundamental
opposition to Marxist dictatorship, and instead wanted to preserve man’s
dignity and freedom of spirit at all costs. This extensive and
well-researched article gives a comprehensive picture of the underground
movement which gave impetus to the churches to adopt a more critical stance
towards the Soviet government.

Donald Dietrich (Boston College) contributes an extensive review article to
the latest issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol 16, no.3, Winter
2002 with the title “Antisemitism and the institutional Catholic Church”.
This assesses four of the recent works on the Catholic Church’s role in the
Holocaust, by Carroll, Phayer, Zucotti and Kertzer, all of them with highly
critical views which Dietrich would seem to share. We may certainly agree
with his conclusion that “Catholics and all Christians must rethink the
roles their faith communities played in the process that led to Auschwitz.
Both institutions and individuals can funnel evil into the world . . . The
logic of institutional preservation can hinder moral reasoning and
decision-making”. At the same time he could have pointed out that all
these authors’ wishful thinking about the past and their desire for future
reform of the church have clearly biased their views.

Peter Kent (University of New Brunswick) similarly gives a percipient
review to two of the same books, by Phayer and Zucotti, in International
History Review, Vol. XXIV, no. 3, September 2002. He rightly praises their
assiduous researches, but is also critical of Phayer’s counter-factual
lapses into speculation, and Zucotti’s readiness to indulge in polemical
denunciation, which serve to limit the impact of their findings.
Rainer Hering in Zeitschrift des Vereins für Hamburgische Geschichte, Bd
85, 1999, has written a hard-hitting article on the career of a highly
zealous pro-Nazi pastor in Hamburg, Johannes Vorrath. He points out how
reluctant the post-1945 church leaders in Hamburg were to face up to the
political extremism of some of their clergy and laity. It is time now, he
suggests, that such examples of silence and amnesia are no longer allowed
to damage the credibility of the church. Only an honest facing up to the
past will suffice.

5) Short notices:

For future review: a) Horst Dähn/Joachim Heise ed., Staat und Kirchen in
der DDR. Zum Stand der zeithistorischen und sozialwissenschaftlichen
Forschung.

Frankfurt/Berne/Vienna 2003. This collection of essays provides an
up-to-date summary of the current state of debate about this controversial
topic.

b) ed. Diane Kirby, Religion and the Cold War. Basingstoke:
Palgrave-Macmillan 2003 A collection of essays mainly by British
scholars, this work explores the immediate post-1945 scene.

Please note that the next i.e. March issue will come to you a few days
late, due to my absence at a conference in Germany.

My best wishes to you all.
John S.Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,

My warmest greetings for the New Year.

Contents:

1) AHA Conference, Chicago, January 2 – 5, 2003
2) Work in progress – Mark Ruff
3) Book reviews:

a) McNally, The Lord’s Distant Vineyard
b) Moltmann-Wendel, Autobiography

4) Journal Articles
5) Archives

List of books reviewed in 2002.

1) The following sessions of interest to our list members are being given
at the AHA conference:

Friday Jan. 3rd: 9.30: Catholics confronting totalitarianism, Jacques
Kornberg (Toronto), Eric Jarvis (King’s College, U. West.Ont)
Saturday Jan. 4th.9.30: Catholics and Secularization in Mexico and
Germany, T. Hartch, (Teikyo Post U.), Mark Ruff, (Concordia U., Portland)
Saturday Jan.4th 9.30: American Protestant Missionaries in Japan 1868-1934
Saturday Jan 4th 2.30: Russian Orthodoxy at Home and Abroad in the Soviet
Period
Sunday Jan 5th 11.00: Changing Missionary attitudes 1827-1964, Clifford
Putney (Bentley College)

2) Work in progress – Mark Ruff

Challenging Catholicism: the impact of German critics since 1945.
From 1945 to the present, the Roman Catholic church has been the subject of
vigorous public debates both in Germany and abroad. In particular, many
scholars, public intellectuals, playwrights, and even many loyal Catholics
have raised questions about the relationship between the church and the
National Socialist regime: did the church facilitate Hitler’s rise to power
and consolidation of power and was it complicit in the Nazi genocide
against the Jews? This project is an attempt to historicize these debates –
to put them into their historical context and perspective and to show how
they reflected larger changes in thought, culture and society.

These debates emerged for a brief time directly after the Second World
War, fell into silence for a period of approximately ten years, and then
reemerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This decade saw the
publication of works which attacked the role of Pius XII, examined the
decision to sign the 1933 Concordat, which defined the role and function of
the church in the National Socialist era, and above all criticized the
Church’s alleged failure to prevent the Nazi Holocaust. In 1963, for
instance, the playwright Rolf Hochhuth presented in Berlin a work for the
stage entitled, Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy), which centered around the
role of Pius XII. Even after the Second Vatican Council formally renounced
the traditional position of the church which attacked the Jews as the
killers of Christ, the attacks on the church continued.

One of the leading critics of the church was (and remains) Der Spiegel, a
leading German newsmagazine edited by Rudolf Augstein, which has printed
article after article denouncing the church for its failures during the
Third Reich (and also attacks the current positions of the church on a
regular basis.) More recently, many scholars, churchmen and intellectuals
in Germany have responded to John Cornwall’s book, Hitler’s Pope, and to
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s new work, which have added fuel to these already
vigorous fires.

In all of these debates, representatives and partisans of the church, not
surprisingly, defended, or attempted to defend the institution against the
onslaught of criticism. In the wake of the debates surrounding the
Concordat, the archdiocese of Cologne founded and funded a historical
institute, the Kommission für Zeitgeschichte, which was given the charge of
collecting, printing and interpreting collections of documents and
materials pertaining to the role of the church under National Socialism.
Those associated with this institute -historians such as Konrad Repgen (the
one, paradoxically, who first brought to light accounts of the Concordat),
Rudolf Morsey, Ludwig Esch, Heinz Hürten, Ulrich von Hehl -have written
dozens of books which attempt to paint the history of the church in a
manner different from that of their critics.

In light of these debates, I take up certain basic issues. Firstly, what
were the motives of the church’s critics? Why did they spend considerable
energy in attacking the church? What did they hope to achieve through
their attacks? Why did many critics (such as Augstein from Der Spiegel)
direct their fire disproportionately at the Catholic church, instead of at
the Protestant church, which was far more complicit in National Socialism
in Germany? Why did they attack the bystanders instead of the perpetrators?
Secondly, why did the church expend such considerable effort in the
defense of the church? Did its response take the forms of apologies or
genuine confessions of guilt? Why did church leaders not simply put
together an unambiguous statement of guilt, or even a limited statement in
the vein of the Stuttgart confession of guilt made by the Protestant church?
I would like to propose a number of hypotheses, which may or may not hold
up under further scrutiny.

1. The debates surrounding the church coincided with and indeed were a part
of a larger reexamination of the German past, with the process of
Vergangenheitsbewältigung. It was only natural, then, that the church would
be held up to scrutiny at the same time that other German institutions came
under fire. Some of the events which triggered the larger reexamination of
the past, such as the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, would
inadvertently trigger attacks on the church, especially when Eichmann’ s
chief prosecutor suggested that the church knew of the Nazi genocide.

2. It is an irony that these debates broke out at precisely the point when
the church was itself opening itself up through aggiornamento – letting in
fresh air into a dusty edifice. But one can argue that the climate of
Vatican II certainly made these debates more possible, especially after the
death of Pius XII in the late 1950s and the ascent of John XXIII to the
papacy. John XXIII and other church leaders encouraged people to raise
questions, to question church orthodoxies – and it was only natural, then,
that many Catholics would raise the specter of the National Socialist past.
For conservative Catholics, such dialogue was equivalent to letting the
genie out the bottle.

3. It is important to remember that coming to terms with such traumatic
events requires time for processing – and a certain historical distance.
Would it have even been possible for church leaders in 1945 and 1946 – or
for German society at this time – to hold the mirror up to itself and
engage in painful soul searching – and not tear apart society even more in
the process and deepen the wounds? In the climate of the emerging Cold War,
the moral reconstruction of Germany had to be put on the back burner, at
the expense of justice. It entailed myth-making, the creation of fictions
in order to preserve social harmony, or not destroy it further. Often
times, this process of coming to terms with the past can take place only
when a new, younger generation steps to the plate. This generational
dynamic lends to the examination of the past not necessarily a greater
impartiality but, certainly, a greater distance. The debates in the 1960s
were conducted by a younger generation that was rising to challenge the
silence of their elders. As such, this process was part of the generational
conflict that characterized the 1960s.

4. While some of the accusers of the church were motivated by a genuine
moral outrage, in many cases, the motives went well beyond this. For some
Roman Catholic critics of the church, the attacks were an attempt to bring
about church reform – to realize the unfulfilled promise of Vatican II, to
bring about a democratization of the church, and to campaign against the
beatification of Pius XII. Their object was to show that the top
leadership of the church had effectively squelched any attempts to oppose
the Nazi Holocaust, had urged silence upon its members, and had signed
concordats with the enemy. If these allegations could be proved, they
would minimize the moral authority of the hierarchy and lead effectively
to a call for a democratization of the church as a whole.

5. For others, the attacks on the church were an attack on the entire
restructuring of the West German political culture and political structures
since 1945. From 1949 until the mid 1960s, German politics was governed by
representatives of the CSU (Christian Social Union) and the
interconfessional CDU (Christian Democractic Union). Although clerics did
not have the same power in the party that they had in the BVP (Bayerische
Volkspartei) or in the Zentrum, the CSU was (incorrectly) seen by some as
being controlled by the church. Attacking the church, especially for
younger radicals in the 1960s, was a way of attacking the moral edifice of
the Federal Republic and calling for greater reforms. Student leaders and
others in the so-called “New Left” could thus claim that the Federal
Republic was rotten to the core, its moral foundation tainted by its
inaction in the past. Some historians refer to the 1960s as the second
founding of the Federal Republic, seeing the 1950s under Adenauer, as a
transition era between authoritarianism and more genuine democracy.
Adenauer, according to this interpretation, can be seen as something akin
to an enlightened despot, a paternalistic dictator. As such, the debates
about the role of the church are essentially about the understanding of
democracy, about the incongruity of a party beholden to an authoritarian
institution at the helm of the Federal Republic. These debates were, thus,
about the presence of an authoritarian institution, one that in the eyes of
its critics had colluded with Nazism, in an age that was becoming rapidly
more democratic.

Mark Ruff, Concordia Universty, Portland, Oregon

3) Book reviews:

a) Vincent J.McNally, The Lord’s Distant Vineyard. A History of the Oblates
and the Catholic Community in British Columbia. Edmonton, Alberta:
University of Alberta Press, Western Canadian Publishers. 2000. xxvi and
443 pp. ISBN 0-88864-346-2

Terry Glavin and former students, Amongst God’s Own. The enduring legacy of
St. Mary’s Mission, Mission, B.C. 2002. 95 pp. ISBN 0-9686046-1-7
Vincent McNally opens with a challenging and commendable statement, which
is eminently repeatable:

“Church history provides an important means of understanding the Christian
people and their Church, since, if it is willing to use the historical
critical method, it thereby reveals where Christians have been and gives
them some important clues about where they are going. The picture it
reveals, if it is striving to be critical as well as objective, does not
always please. Shadows are part of all people and the institutions they
create. Institutional shadows can be ignored or deliberately concealed, but
the price is a heavy one. (xv-xvi)

It is part of McNally’s honest assessment to admit right away that the
story of the Oblate mission in British Columbia has shadows. Indeed, two
such shadows run as themes throughout the book – the failure to relate to
the native Indians to whom the mission was principally directed, and the
failure to halt the secularization of British Columbia society in the
formative years of the province’s growth. And yet the Oblates were to have
a significant impact which McNally has recorded with a carefully researched
and insightful account of their activities from the middle nineteenth
century to the present. This is the first such scholarly work and is
therefore very welcome, all the more since there is a notable paucity of
church history studies on British Columbia, possibly reflecting the
widespread indifference of the population towards all religion.
The Oblates came to the mainland of British Columbia in the late 1850s.
They had two ambitions: to undertake missions to the native Indian
population, and to evade the control of the local bishop. Since the latter
was based in Victoria on Vancouver Island, the Oblates established
themselves on the mainland, several miles up the Fraser River. But this was
exactly the time when the discovery of gold in the far interior of the
province brought a huge surge of gold-greedy humanity, most of them from
California, pouring into the virtually undiscovered and as yet ungoverned
territory. All of these incomers were obliged to use the Fraser River as
the only access route to the north. The resulting clashes with the natives
proved highly unfortunate, being characterized by racist attitudes of
superiority by the whites, which led to numerous outbursts of violence,
frequently lubricated by illegal liquor. The Oblates, despite sharing
similar racist views of native paganism ad backwardness, were obliged to
try and defend their prospective converts, especially in the fight against
alcohol.

But, as McNally rightly makes clear, the missionary strategy was itself
lacking in cultural sensitivity. The Oblates sought to bring about in their
“converts” or their children for whom schools were quickly established., a
kind of Christian-Catholic enclave, where the Indians would be led to
renounce their “savage” ways, but remain separate from the incursions of
the white settlers and miners. This was an unrealistic policy. The native
Indians turned to the church only as a means of protecting themselves from
the rapacity and harmful impact of the whites. Moreover, McNally suggests,
the missionaries may have helped to spread those European diseases, such as
smallpox, which killed off a third of the native population in the second
half of the nineteenth century. This was then interpreted as the
“destiny” of the native peoples. In contrast to the Americans’ violent
decimation, Canadians would adopt a kinder treatment and look after the
natives until “destiny” took its course. Such views continued well into the
twentieth century.

The Oblates soon found that the enormous size of British Columbia (four
times the area of Germany) and the scattered settlements of native
populations far exceeded the manpower the Order could provide. The tasks
of establishing an economically viable Mission, the attempts to learn the
indigenous language, and the needs both physical and spiritual of their
congregations, placed a tremendous strain on these priests. Furthermore,
the Oblates practised a rather rigid spiritual discipline, demanding
unswerving obedience to their superiors. This caused frequent personal
problems for which there was little opportunity of resolution. It was
often, McNally reports, a disheartening and even a depressing existence.
Nevertheless the Oblates persevered. Slowly they gained recruits from
France or Quebec or even locally, and reached out to more native bands. By
the 1870s they had successfully established a large farm on Okanagan Lake
whose flourishing orchards became nationally-known. But they were much
less successful in transforming these “poor savages” into loyal Catholic
peasants.

McNally is highly critical of the Oblates’ inflated claims for
“conversions”, and of their adamant refusal to regard native spirituality
as more than “pagan superstitions”. Instead, he writes with sympathy about
the pre-contact native traditions and wisdom, and indicates that a
considerable syncretism with Christianity had taken place before the
Oblates arrived. But since the priests lacked command of any native
language, their ability to make a convincing presentation of the Catholic
faith must have been rare. For the same reasons, the native cultures
remained a closed book to most Oblate missionaries.

McNally tackles the thorny issue of the residential schools with judicious
balance, and places it in its historical context. Of course, both the
Oblates and the dominant Europeans saw these schools as a vehicle for
acculturation of the natives. But Social Darwinism prevailed. The natives
were clearly to remain at the bottom of the economic ladder. The fact that
such schools were established by the Federal Government in Ottawa and
deliberately and miserably funded led to recurrent conditions of
discrimination and injustice. However devoted most of the teachers may
have been, the resources were always too limited. But the weightier charge
of stifling paternalism and hostility to any native traditions is
undoubtedly true. So too, unfortunately, is the fact, which McNally skirts
around, that a minority of pupils suffered physical abuse. Together, by the
1960s and 1970s, these charges brought about the end of the whole
residential school system, though another forty years were to elapse before
compensation for the victims could be agreed upon.

The third section of the book deals with the Oblates’ work with “whites”
or European congregations. This describes their failure to prevent the
establishment of a strictly non-sectarian school system for the immigrants
throughout the province. As a result British Columbia became and remains
the most secularized and unchurched area in the country. The situation
was not helped by such oddities of history, as when one Oblate bishop of
Victoria was murdered while on a missionary tour of Alaska, another was
forcibly deposed by the Vatican for alleged sexual misconduct, and a third
lost his post because of land speculation. The lesson was hardly learnt,
for seventy years later his successor in Victoria gambled away $13 million
of the diocese’s resources. Admittedly these last were not Oblates, but the
story was hardly edifying. And with the increase of anglophone immigrants,
the French-speaking Oblates became more and more peripheral. Particularly
from 1914 onwards there was no groundswell for any organized religion, let
alone one led by a religious order. The Oblates’ dream of a new and
fruitful ministry in effect withered on the vine.

Writing from today’s perspective, McNally laments the cultural
insensitivity of his Oblate predecessors, which he blames as the chief
cause for their lack of success. This is no triumphalist missionary
success story. Instead McNally’s skillful researches into the vast
archival records portray these men and their activities, shadows and all.
Readers will note with approval his ability to be both critical and
objective, and will be grateful for the insightful account of how the
Catholic Church has fared in this remote corner of the Lord’s vineyard.
Terry Glavin’s account of one of the Oblates’ now dissolved residential
schools at Mission, B.C., consists of a large number of excellently chosen
photographs, as well as reminiscences by many of the former pupils, mainly
from the 1940s and 1950s. He too challenges the widely-held view that these
schools were run by depraved priests and bureaucrats, victimizing the
pupils in a process of cultural genocide. Instead we are given a
sympathetic and balanced tribute to a lost community and a collective
memory of a system no longer practised.
JSC

b) Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Autobiography London: SCM Press 1997, 188pp

John Bowden’s elegant translation of Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel’s
autobiography makes available to English-speaking audiences this
interesting and hitherto little-known voice among German theologians.
Elisabeth is a theologian in her own right, as well as being married to
the well-known professor of Systematic Theology in Tübingen. This account
of her struggles to find her personal and professional identity provides a
valuable insight into one aspect of German theological developments over
the past half century.

Moltmann-Wendel was brought up during the Nazi era in a conservative
Protestant family, which staunchly resisted all attempts to nazify the
church’s doctrines, and supported the Confessing Church and its leading
theologians Barth and Bonhoeffer. After the war, she started to study
theology in this tradition and became the second woman theologian to
achieve a doctorate from Göttingen. Then she met Jürgen Moltman and spent
the next years largely preoccupied with house and family cares.
Increasingly, however, she was discontent with the highly traditional and
male-dominated Evangelical Church in Germany and its associated theological
faculties.

In the 1970s, while on a tour of the United States, she was strongly
influenced by the early feminist writers, and saw the need to bring these
liberating ideas back to her own church. But she quickly recognized that
more was needed than merely an anti-male assertion of women’s rights. This
led her to embark on a search for a specific theology, derived from
Christian experience, which could replace, or at least challenge, the
historic and patriarchal Lutheran traditions.

This autobiography spells out her search for a Christianity which invites
women to active collaboration as autonomous persons. This meant trying to
discover the ways in which women are affected by the encounter with God. It
was not exhausted in the repudiation of masculine concepts and images, but
sought wholeness and community in life. If much of the impetus was
derived from political and liberation theology, nevertheless
Moltmann-Wendel sought to filter this through feminist ideas. Above all,
feminist theology began, not from above, but from below. It was to be
rooted in women’s genuine personal experiences, incorporating their
physical as well their intellectual perceptions.

This was, as she makes clear, an uphill struggle. “In the barren German
theological landscape, the churches were only irritated by feminist
theology and the theological faculties took no notice of it at all.”
Furthermore, there soon developed rival schools within the feminist
movement as a whole. Some abandoned Christianity or all religion; others
became pantheistic Goddess worshippers; others rejected all patriarchy,
including the Old Testament, to the point where the charge of antisemitism
was levelled. Moltmann-Wendel is at pains to point out that, in her
household and with her history, such an accusation is untenable. But
there are still divisive issues, such as lesbianism, which have as yet
remained unresolved.

Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel looks back on her long years of participation in
the search for a feminist theology with both pride and perplexity. The
current situation is certainly ambivalent. Neither church nor university
favours these endeavours. But, she concludes, ” a broad area for
experiments and action remains between resignation and hope, in which a bit
of earthiness is provided not by scholastic opinions but by the reality of
women, their differences and their expectations of feminist theology”.
JSC

4) Articles:

a) Manfred Gailus, “Overwhelmed by their own fascination with the ideas of
1933: Berlin’s Protestant social milieu in the Third Reich” in German
History. Vol. 20, no.4 (2002), 462ff. This is a most valuable English
summary of Gailus’ new book Protestantismus und Nationalsozialismus:
Studien zur Durchdringung des protestantische Sozialmilieu in Berlin,
Cologne: Bohlau Verlag 2001. This local study reinforces what has already
been demonstrated by Doris Bergen and myself that the whole Protestant
Church was swept away by nationalist passions in early 1933, and never
recovered. Only a tiny handful resisted the fascination of Nazism which
seemed to many to be a genuine attempt to revive Germany’s fortunes through
spectacular and firm leadership. This local study of the central bastion
of Prussian Protestantism shows the variety of responses throughout the
city, and provides statistical proof of the impact of Nazi infiltration,
mostly self-invited by the pastors, but encouraged by their congregations.
JSC

b) Two of our list members have contributed articles to the conference
volume, edited by John A.Moses and Christopher Pugsley, The German Empire
and Britain’s Pacific Dominions, 1871-1919, Claremont, California: Regina
Books 2000.

Julian Jenkins writes on “Idealism confronts Realpolitik: The attempts to
avert a world crisis through a Peace Movement of the Churches, 1908-1914”,
which is a preview or part of his newly-published book Christian Pacifism
confronts German Nationalism: the ecumenical movement and the cause of
peace in Germany, 1914-1933, Edwin Mellen Press 2002 (to be reviewed here
shortly). Greg Munro writes on “The War Guilt Debate and the Belgian
atrocities: the reaction of the Roman Catholic Church in Belgium and
Germany”, which examines the German army’s treatment of Belgium as an item
in the post-war indictment. Predictably most German Catholics maintained a
wholly nationalistic stance, but Munro points to the lone voices of
Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster, a noted pacifist and the Catholic editor of a
small but resolute newspaper, Fr Moenius, who attempted to challenge the
alleged myth of German innocence. In the end they were outvoted even in the
Catholic ranks, but deserve credit for their wider sympathies. Not until
the 1950s, with the onslaught by Fritz Fischer on the received versions of
the origins of the 1914 war, and on the army’s conduct in Belgium, was
Moenius vindicated. But the Roman Catholics remained divided, and a true
acknowledgment of the need for repentance and reparation is still
outstanding. Both Jenkins and Munro show that the few intellectuals
inclined to a pacifist perspective were overwhelmed by the number of their
fellow Christians who supported the militarism and imperialism of the
ruling elite.

The latest issue of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte (Vol. 15, no 1, 2002) is
devoted to German-Polish relations, and contains the papers given at a
conference in Ustron, Silesia not far from Auschwitz. These contributions
cover the story from 1870s onwards, and describe not only the relations
between the churches and new Polish state after 1918, but also the
traumatic effect of two German invasions in 1914 and 1939, and the
disastrous genocidal policies of the Nazis. The clashes caused by
religious nationalism are described by G.Besier and G.Ringshausen for the
German Protestants and by R Zerelik for the Russian Orthodox, while two
further articles give a picture of the fate of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in
Poland up to 1989. A.Stempin gives us an insightful piece on the
controversial figure of Maximilian Kolbe, the “saint against the Jews”?
And J.von Lüpke very appropriately concludes with an essay on “The Task of
Forgiveness” – a still unfinished obligation.

5) Archives:

The latest publication of the German Historical Institute, Washington,
D.C., is The GDRin German Archives”. This provides a useful list of Church
Archives, Protestant and Catholic. Since both churches are organized on a
local basis, and the material is held by each diocese/Land Church, this
listing gives a short description of the holdings, the e-mail and web-site
addresses, and even the hours of opening!. Most useful.

Books reviewed in 2002:

(All reviews were written by the Editor unless so indicated)
Besier, G. Die Kirchen und das Dritte Reich (N.Hope) February
Brechenmacher T. and Ostry, H. Paul VI – Rom und Jerusalem (J.J.Hughes)
September
Callaghan, W. The Catholic Church in Spain March
Christophers, B. Positioning the Missionary. .B. Good in British Columbia
April
Cresswell, A. and Tow, M. Franz Hildebrandt November
Dentan, P. Impossible de se taire December
Draper, A Pastor Andre Trocme December
Dudley-Smith, T. John Stott, Vol.2 April
Feldman, E. Catholics and Jews in 20th century America (Joshua Zeitz)
June
Fell, M. Christianity in Iceland October
Genizi, H. Holocaust, Israel and Canadian Protestant Churches November
Gray, D. Percy Dearmer. A Parson’s Pilgrimage March
Hill,R. Lord Acton (N.Hope) October
Kent, P. The lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII (R.Ventresca) September
Lawler, J.G. Popes and Politics: Reform, resentment and the Holocaust
(J.J.Hughes) May
Lindsay, M. Covenanted Solidarity: Karl Barth (Matthew Hockenos) June
McInerny, R. Defamation of Pope Pius XII (J.J.Hughes) October
Putney, C. Muscular Christianity October
Raum, E. Dietrich Bonhoeffer October
Sanchez, J Pius XII and the Holocaust (J.J.Hughes) May
Sundkler, B. and Steed, C. A history of the Church in Africa January
Thorne, S. Congregational Missions and Imperialism October
Van Die, M. ed. Religion and Public Life in Canada (G.Egerton) March
Wainwright, G. Lesslie Newbiggin January
Wolgast, E. Die Wahrnehmung des Dritten Reiches AprilWith very best wishes to you all,

Sincerely,
John S.Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends
My very best wishes to you all at this season. May the celebration of the
birth of Jesus be a time of joy and refreshment to you. At a time when the
wider political scene is so laden with gloom and disasters, we can only
pray that the Light of the World will indeed prevail. In the meantime, we
can surely remind ourselves that it is better to light a candle than to
curse the darkness. A few lines from George Herbert for this season follow:

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God no hymne for thee?
My soul’s a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace
Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the day-light hours
Then we will chide the sunne for letting night
Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I find a sunne
Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt sunnes look sadly.
Then we will sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine
Till ev’n his beams sing, and my musick shine.

Contents

1) Report on KZG conference 2002
2) Report on GSA conference 2002
3) Karl Barth-Rezeption Since 1990
4) Book reviews:

a) Dentan, Impossible de se taire
b) Draper, Pastor Andre Trocmé

5) Book Review Symposium – J.G.Lawler, Popes and Politics
1) Report on the KZG conference 2002
For the first time, the Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte group held its annual
meeting outside Europe. The 2002 conference took place at the Pacific
Lutheran University, near Tacoma, Washington, USA. Luckily, it was
possible for our founder and editor of the journal, Prof. Gerhard Besier,
to attend along with most of our European colleagues on the editorial
board. As well we were fortunate to have guests from Israel, Poland,
Finland, Sweden and Germany, along with numerous participants from the
United States and myself from Canada. This was made possible by grants
from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and other foundations. We were also
grateful for a presentation by three Holocaust survivors, who recounted
their personal experiences.
The theme of the conference was “Christian teachings about Jews: National
comparisons in the shadow of the Holocaust”, with the emphasis on the
period before 1939. We heard reports on Germany, Poland, Spain and Latin
America, Estonia and Denmark, which gave rise to sombre comparisons. The
picture would have been even darker if we had been able to have full reports on France, Roumania,
Hungary and Russia. Yet, it became clear that each national situation
involved a complex mixture of political and social as well as theological
elements. We learnt, for example, that, despite the virulent antisemitism
of such men as Court Preacher Adolf Stoecker, Germany before 1914 was one
of the best places for Jews to live. Likewise we learnt that the most
successful rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, namely in Denmark, could
not be attributed to the lack of antisemitism in that country, even in
Christian circles.

Such comparisons also invited the question as to how far words or ideas
led to action. It was clearly necessary to explore further the relation of
Christian teachings to the actual murderous policies of the Holocaust. Such
considerations also needed to evaluate the secular aspects of antisemitism.
How were Christian antisemitic attitudes picked up and institutionalized?
Above all, a fuller consideration had to be given to the issue of
continuity versus contingency in this crucial period.

Equally, left for another conference were the questions of post-1945
Christian teachings about Jews. To some of the audience, it seemed, little
had or has changed, given the continuity of Christian symbolism and
liturgies, especially about the Crucifixion. To others, on the other hand,
the developments since the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s and the
equivalent Protestant changes towards Judaism, mark the most significant
event in church history in the twentieth century, with the abandonment of
sixteen hundred years of polemical bigotry. Another fruitful topic for a
future conference would be to examine the ways in which church history has
been used (or misused) in the post-Communist countries of eastern Europe.
Another unprecedented event in KZG’s history was the presence at both
evening sessions of several young persons holding up anti-Israeli or
anti-Holocaust placards. The most blatant of these stated categorically:
“Luther was right about the Jews”. When I attempted to ask the placard
holder whether she was a Lutheran or had read what Luther had once said, I
was told that this was a silent protest and that the perpetrators were
forbidden to engage in any discussion. The conference members were
naturally distressed at this wholly unwanted presence.

But in the conference itself, a lively dialogue on Christian-Jewish
relations was possible in an atmosphere of mutual respect and equality.
This meeting therefore followed the pattern established over the past
thirty years, showing that the North America provides a fruitful meeting
ground for such encounters.

The quality of the papers presented was excellent and they will appear ,
together with some of the responses, in the first issue of Kirchliche
Zeitgeschichte in 2003. If your Library does not subscribe, you might like
to get in touch with Gerhard Lindemann, Kisselgasse 1, D69117 Heidelberg,
Germany.
JSC

2) German Studies Association, San Diego, CA, 4-6 October 2002
The first day of the conference included a session titled “Mennonites,
Prostitutes, Catholics, and Jews: The ‘Other’ and Nation-Building in
Nineteenth-Century Germany.” Mark Jantzen of Bethel College in Kansas
opened with a paper on “The First Duty of a Citizen: Mennonite Emancipation
and Opposition to Prussian Military Service, 1848-1890.” Jantzen introduced
listeners to a topic new to many of them: the Mennonites of the Vistula
Delta and their conflicts with the Prussian (later German) government over
issues of military service in the second half of the nineteenth century. As
the case of the pacifist Mennonites demonstrates, Jantzen argued,
acceptance of military service was a “necessary precondition” for admission
into the German nation. By 1890, Mennonites in Germany either emigrated or
agreed to abandon their pacifism and take up arms. Keith Pickus of Wichita
State University gave a paper on “Nation-Building on the Periphery:
Catholics and Jews in Hesse.” Pickus used a regional focus to offer new
perspectives on the Kulturkampf and antisemitism in Imperial Germany. In
Hesse, he showed, the antisemitic movement associated with the romantic
populist Otto Boeckel contained anti-Prussian elements that made it
attractive to some local Catholics. At the same time, the Jewish liberal
politician and Kulturkaempfer Ludwig Bamberger repeatedly won election to
the Reichstag, backed by Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish votes. Like
Jantzen, Pickus showed the relationship between religion and the German
nation to be much more complex than familiar models of confessional dualism
suggest. Julia Bruggemann’s very interesting paper on prostitution falls
outside our area so will not be discussed here. In his stimulating comment,
Helmut Walser Smith of Vanderbilt University asked whether the idea of the
nation was the optimum principle around which to organize these three
papers. All three topics, he suggested, revealed the “underside of national
unity as the long-term decline of internal diversity.”

A good crowd gathered on the second day of the conference for a session on
“Theology as Ideology in Nazi and Postwar Germany.” Richard Steigmann-Gall
of Kent State University led off with a paper titled “The Text and Context
of Nazi ‘Theology’.” Steigmann-Gall argued that even Heinrich Himmler, the
Reichsfuehrer-SS, qualified his condemnation of Christianity and retained
some aspects of Christian teaching. According to Steigmann-Gall, Nazi
Pagans demonstrated a “surprisingly favorable view of Protestantism” and
even depended on certain varieties of Protestant thought. Suzanne
Brown-Fleming of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum followed with
a presentation titled “‘Christian Charity’ and ‘Jewish Vengeance’: Bishop
Aloisius Muench’s One World in Charity, 1946-1947.” Brown-Fleming showed
how the American bishop Muench, Catholic liaison representative to the U.S.
Army in occupied Germany from 1946 to 1949, became popular among German
Catholics as a sympathetic, pro-German figure. In a celebrated pastoral
letter called “One World in Charity,” Muench preached a version of
“Christian” love that implied “Jewish” hate and contempt for God. It was
ironic but not surprising, Brown-Fleming concluded, that a myth grew up
associating Muench with Adolf Eichmann. Finally Matthew Hockenos of
Skidmore College offered reflections on “Protestant Theology and the
Conversion of Jews, 1945-1950.” Hockenos described how a handful of
Lutherans in Bavaria resumed efforts to convert Jews almost immediately
after World War II ended. Displaced persons camps provided missionaries
with concentrated groups of Jews to whom they preached the gospel in the
hope of winning them to Christianity. Habits of Christian anti-Judaism
combined with Christian guilt about the abandonment of the Jews under
Nazism kept the church’s mission to the Jews alive for decades after the
Holocaust. Doris Bergen of the University of Notre Dame provided the
commentary. Bergen noted the different definitions of “religion” in each of
the three papers and drew attention to common themes of ambiguity and
confusion.

The third panel on religion took place in the very last conference session,
so that at times the presenters threatened to outnumber their audience.
Nevertheless the panel titled “Religious Institutions in the Nazi Era”
featured two interesting papers, both by subscribers to this newsletter.
Gerhard Besier spoke on “The Policy of the Ecclesiastical Foreign Office of
the German Protestant Church (DEK) during the Spanish Civil War,” and
Michael Phayer sent a paper (read in his absence by Judith Meyers of
Olympic College) titled “NS church Policy for the Protestant Volksdeutsch
Church in Poland.” Besier presented an intriguing picture of the German
Protestant Church in Spain in the 1930s, where official representatives of
the church’s foreign office under Bishop Heckel supported Franco, whereas
many other German Protestants sympathized with the Republican cause.
Phayer’s paper emphasized Nazi duplicity toward the ethnic German
Protestants of Poland after September 1939. In the former Polish lands,
Phayer argued, Nazis faced no constraints in expressing their hatred of the
Christian churches: they used the Volksdeutschen and their piety to
consolidate Nazi power and then turned on them with radical efforts to
disestablish their churches. Robert Ericksen of Pacific Lutheran University
responded with a spirited comment that acknowledged the innovative nature
of Besier’s and Phayer’s work but drew attention to tendencies in Phayer’s
paper that could come across as apologetic.

Taken together, these three panels on religion represent some of the most
exciting research in German Studies occurring on both sides of the Atlantic.
Doris Bergen, Notre Dame University

3) Karl Barth Rezeption since 1990
In the years since 1995, when this Arbeitsgemeinschaft was first
established, the brief of the group has always been a wide one. There has
been geographical diversity, both in terms of membership and also in terms
of themes discussed in the newsletters. There has been confessional
diversity, with studies of Protestant, Catholic, Mormon and Jehovah’s
Witness churches all coming under scrutiny. And there has been disciplinary
diversity – not only have the histories of institutional churches been
considered and discussed, but (as should always happen within the realm of
Church history) theology and theologians have also found their just
recognition. It is in this context that the present piece finds a place,
being a reflection upon a man who, as a person and as a theologian, has
received quite some exposure within this forum over the past seven years,
Karl Barth. More specifically, this piece is intended as a brief summary of
the scholarly reception of Barth’s work since 1990.

The former Director of the Karl Barth-Archiv in Basel, Dr Hinrich
Stoevesandt, said some years ago that, although Barth was undoubtedly one
of the most influential theologians for both Protestants and Catholics
during the twentieth century, theology ‘has in the main gone down other
roads than those to which he pointed’ in the years following his death in
1968. In other words, Barth’s influence, while indisputable, has been
fundamentally antithetical to the path of mainstream theology and Church
praxis. Or, perhaps better, in the decades following his death, mainstream
theological study was undoubtedly influenced, but in an overly antithetical
sense, by Karl Barth. Paths taken were deliberate divergences from those
Barth would have wished to see followed.

Whether or not this is still the case is an open question. What is
absolutely clear, however, is that scholarly study of Barth has increased
massively throughout the past twelve years and, crucially, not only in the
northern hemisphere but also in countries such as Australia, South Africa
and even Japan.

A significant reason for this boom in Barth studies has undoubtedly been
the increasing availability of Barth’s own writings, including many pieces
that were hitherto available only to those who trawled through the
archives. In this, the work of the Barth-Archiv and the Karl Barth
Foundation have been indispensable, in particular with their decision to
produce a Gesamtausgabe: Section I (Sermons); Section II (Academic Works);
Section 3 (Individual Lectures and Brief Works); Section 4 (Conversations);
Section 5 (Letters); Section 6 (From Barth’s Life). The collection and
production of this Gesamtausgabe is, obviously, a work-in-progress and,
given the massive size of Barth’s writings, will not be completed for many
years to come. However, the fruits of the work to date are already
noticeable and have spawned a renewed interest in Barth’s life and work,
from scholars throughout the world.

As far as the actual content of current Barth studies is concerned, the
major contributions in recent years have been concentrated upon four basic
areas:

Barth’s theological methodology
Barth’s ethics and anthropology
Barth’s understanding of the Jewish question
Barth’s relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum

On the first, the major area of debate has been focused on the revision of
the traditional view, put forward by Hans Urs von Balthasar et al in the
early 1950s, that Barth’s dialectical method evolved into an analogical
method after 1931. In recent years, German and American scholars have done
much to critique this argument, by convincingly showing the presence of
dialectic, as a significant piece of Barth’s methodology, well into his
‘Church Dogmatics’. Scholars such as Michael Beintker led the way in this
revision, with the most influential study coming from Bruce McCormack, in
his 1995 book ‘Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology’ (a
book which won him the Karl Barth prize in 1998). This book has been, in
fact, arguably the most influential book on Barth since Berkouwer’s 1956
study ‘Triumph of Grace’.

As a brief aside, another methodological problem which has engaged Barth
scholars has been the extent to which Barthian theology is compatible with
postmodernist and deconstructionist discourse. Three books, in particular,
shed light on this. The first was written by Graham Ward in 1995, on
‘Barth, Derrida and the Language of Theology’. The second, which appeared
the following year, was entitled ‘Deconstructing Barth: a Study of the
Complementary Methods in Karl Barth and Jacques Derrida’ (written by Isolde
Andrews). The third, which has demonstrated the vitality of Barth
scholarship in Australia, was the result of a 1998 conference celebrating
the 30th anniversary of his death, and appeared as ‘Karl Barth: A Future
for Postmodern Theology?’ There is more to be done here, but at least it
can be said that discourse scholars have not overlooked the figure of Barth
who was, most clearly, a pioneer in European intellectual history.

The second area of significant development has been concerned with Barth’s
ethics and the related field of Barthian anthropology. Both Nigel Biggar
(‘The Hastening That Waits’, 1993) and John Webster (‘Barth’s Ethics of
Reconciliation’, 1995, and ‘Barth’s Moral Theology’, 1998) have countered
the traditional view, put forward by people like Robert Willis, that Barth
so emphasised the transcendental ‘Wholly Other’ God that he allowed no
place for human agency in the field of ethics. The reality, as these two
scholars, and others like them have shown, is far different. With renewed
readings of Barth’s Christ-centred theology (that is, a theology that takes
the vere homo of Jesus as seriously as the vere Deus) and the consequently
sharpened focus on Barth’s anthropology, it is now generally understood
that Barth’s ‘system’ allowed for no other stance other than a very
activistic ethics. This is not to suggest that Barth took a similar view to
Brunner and Tillich, believing that theology could begin with humanity. But
it is to argue strongly that, precisely because his theology started with
the God of the Incarnation, Barth had to deal sympathetically with human
ethical agency. Not surprisingly, this fresh paradigm has enabled new and,
to many, very surprising insights into Barth’s political life.

Thirdly, and in part as a result of the above, there have been numerous
works in the past twelve years that have looked at Barth’s understanding of
the Jewish question, arguably one of the most pressing politico-ethical
issues that dominated his lifetime. The older view (until the early 1990s)
was that Barth was indifferent to Judaism, that he believed the Jews to be
a religiously anachronistic people, or – worse – that he was positively
hostile to them. However, Eberhard Busch (‘Unter dem Bogen des Einen
Bundes’, 1996), and Mark R. Lindsay (‘Covenanted Solidarity’, 2001) have
both sought to over-turn this view, by looking at both Barth’s political
activities and writings, and the theological bases upon which they were
built. Katherine Sonderegger has, it is true, presented a more critical
view (‘That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew’, 1992) but it does appear that, in
general, the tide seems to be turning away from the old, uncritically
negative view of Barth on this score.

Finally, at the level of Barth’s personal life, new research is now being
done on Barth’s personal relations, in particular with his long-time
colleague Charlotte von Kirschbaum. Was she simply a devoted secretary,
without whose steadfastness Barth’s work would never have been what it in
fact became? Was she exploited by him, as many feminist writers have
suggested? Were the two of them in love, with Barth’s own wife Nelly in
fact the exploited figure? Perhaps all three are true. But certainly there
is a wealth of material here that is only just starting to be uncovered.
There are many other strands of Barthian scholarship that are currently
being pursued, including critical works on his biblical commentaries,
studies of his sacramental theology, and studies from the perspectives of
liberation, feminist and black theologies, all of which illustrate the
continuing relevance of Barth’s theology for the present age. Perhaps,
though, the clearest evidence that Barth scholarship is alive and well is
the fact that, in 1997, Princeton Theological Seminary successfully
tendered to establish the Center for Karl Barth Studies (Yale was the other
interested party). Since its inception, the Center has hosted successful
conferences and is actively involved in fostering Barth studies, in
conjunction with the Karl Barth Society of North America.

There is, evidently, huge and growing interest in the life and work of this
most influential theologian. Not all share his views nor indeed should
anyone share the views of any theologian without a duly critical stance.
But those of us who see in Barth a champion of the Church, of the Gospel,
and of the human freedom that it proclaims, can only regard the current
status of Barth research as immensely exciting.
Finally, to quote Arthur Cochrane (notable for his work on the Church
Struggle), ‘the interest of the [Karl Barth] Society is not in promoting
Barth’s theology, but in using it because of its striking clarity in
saying ‘what the apostles and prophets witnessed.’ This, surely, is of
interest to all who are involved in theology and the Church.
Dr Mark R. Lindsay
Director of Academic Studies
Trinity College
Fellow, Department of History
University of Melbourne
Parkville 3052
email: mlindsay@trinity.unimelb.edu.au
4) Book reviews
a) Paul-Emil Dentan, Impossible de se taire. Des protestants suisses face
au nazisme. Geneva: Labor et fides. 2000. 134 pp.
Everyone knows that Karl Barth was the champion of the resistance against
the nazification of the German Evangelical Church. After his enforced
expulsion to his homeland Switzerland in 1935, he became even more
outspoken in his opposition to Nazi totalitarianism. But he was not alone.
This short book pays tribute to a dozen other Swiss personalities, largely
inspired by Barth, who sought by thought and deed to stand firm in the hour
of danger.

Some were pastors whose resolute preaching of the gospel stressed the need
to prevent any weakening of the faith and to defend human rights. Others,
like Pastor Vogt of Zurich and Gertrud Kurz, became notably active in
support of the refugees seeking asylum in Switzerland, most of whom were
Jewish. They were already heavily engaged in this work, when, in the
summer of 1942, the Swiss government ordered their borders to be closed and
all refugees to be turned back. This move aroused a wave of protests in
Swiss Protestant circles. Their outrage at the government’s complicity
with the Nazis was heightened by their moral and biblical insights, which
are here quoted at some length. Their efforts were curtailed, their
activities placed under surveillance, and their public speeches and sermons
censored. But the Hugenot tradition of resistance against oppression gave
them strength, and they successfully mobilized at least a portion of the
church against opportunism and expediency. Their traditional links to
France made them particularly anxious to smuggle endangered refugees across
the Franco-Swiss border, in many cases successfully. Amongst those
involved in this work was the honorary Swiss citizen, the Dutchman Visser
‘t Hooft, then acting as general secretary of the World Council of Churches
(in process of formation)., whose resistance story was later told in his
autobiography.

In recent years, the Swiss record in the second world war has been heavily
criticized, and its reputation for peaceful neutrality challenged. So
Dentan’s tribute (recently translated into German under the title
Nachstehen oder Widerstehen, Zurich: Theologisches Verlag) is designed to
show that there were those who upheld the ideals of generosity and
integrity based on the Protestant tradition, i.e. the other and better
Switzerland.
JSC

b) Allison Stark Draper, Pastor André Trocmé. Spiritual Leader of the
French village Le Chambon. New York: Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. 2001.
112pp.

The fame of the holiday resort village Le Cambon sur Lignon in the uplands
of southern France first came through an American professor, Philip Hallie,
in his book Lest innocent blood be shed, followed by Pierre Sauvage’s
inspiring film Weapons of the Spirit. They both narrated how this remote
community, peopled mainly by Hugenot Protestants, became a haven during the
second world war for some 5000 refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish,
seeking asylum from the threat of imprisonment or deportation at the hands
of the Nazis and their French collaborators.

Allison Draper has now summarized their findings in a concise effective
book designed for teenagers. It is one of a series of so-called “Holocaust
Biographies”, giving an introduction to some of the historical
personalities of sixty years ago. André Trocmé was the Protestant pastor
of this village who successfully mobilized his people to provide a whole
series of hiding places, mainly in remote farm houses in the countryside.
Trocmé had already discovered two features of this community distinguishing
them from others. First, the deeply entrenched memory of the persecution
suffered by the Hugenots over many centuries at the hands of the majority
Catholics made them identify with the victims of modern oppression.
Second, these Calvinists maintained a strong attachment to the Hebrew
Scriptures in their Old Testament, and hence regarded with high respect
God’s Chosen People, the Jews. Trocmé himself was a charismatic and
conscientious pacifist, whose hatred of violence, tyranny and militarism
led to his passionate and dedicated involvement, and brought him into the
clandestine resistance movement. The school he established for non-violent
peace studies became the centre for protecting the refugees. At the height
of the Nazi round-up of Jews in 1942, Trocmé and his congregation not only
provided safe houses for Jews and other anti-Nazi victims, but also
participated in underground efforts to smuggle them across the frontier to
Switzerland. These activities quickly led to confrontations with the French
authorities, but Trocmé was backed by the defiant spirit of his flock. In
1943 he and his two closest associates were arrested by the Vichy police
and held for a month in a concentration camp. Later he was forced to take
refuge himself and survived in hiding until the end of the war. Later on,
he was frequently asked why this community had behaved so nobly in such a
unique conspiracy of goodness. But for all in Le Chambon, this was the
normal thing to do, a fulfillment of their Christian obligation towards
their neighbours.

After 1945 Trocmé dedicated his services to the cause of peace through the
Fellowship of Reconciliation, and later became a pastor in Geneva until his
death in 1971. Allison Draper’s short and sympathetic description of his
career includes some well-chosen photographs and can be commended – not
only to beginning students – to accompany showings of Sauvage’s splendid film.
JSC

5) Book review Symposium
The Spring 2002 issue of the U.S.Catholic Historian, Vol. 20, no.2,
contains a lengthy book review section, examining J.G.Lawler’s recent book,
Popes and Politics: Reform, Resentment and the Holocaust (reviewed here in
the May 2002 issue). This work is itself largely a review of a number of
recent books, particularly those dealing with Pius XII and developments
within the Roman Catholic Church. So it was the idea of this journal’s
editor to invite four of those authors criticized by Lawler to respond at
some length to his views. This they do with vigour (p.62-88). Lawler then
gives his own response to their challenges (p.89 – 117), which again takes
up the cudgels to point out the egregious blunders, flaws and errors of
these commentators. Not much of historical value emerges from this
battle, but it affords a good overview of the present state of the debate
for those who have not struggled through the material recently. In fact at
least 15 books dealing with Pius XII have appeared in the last while, so
this kind of argumentative and critical summary may well be of help.
JSC
With very best wishes to you all. I hope to be in touch with you again in 2003
John S.Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca

Dear Friends,
November 2nd has always been set aside in the Church Calendar as All Souls’
Day, marking the commemoration of the dead. Along with the more
nationalistic ceremonies of Armistice Day on November 11th , which mark the
annual remembrance of the fallen in the twentieth century’s wars, this
would seem to be an appropriate occasion for a short discourse on modern
martyrology, which I here offer for your consideration.

Contents:

1)Modern martyrology.
2) In Memoriam: Prof. Kurt Nowak, Leipzig
3) Book reviews:

a) Genizi, Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant churches
b) Cresswell and Tow, Franz Hildebrandt

4) Review article by Prof. K.Repgen of M.Phayer, Catholic Church and the
Holocaust

1) Modern martyrology

In July 1998, in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen, a notable ceremony
was held outside the main, west entrance to Westminster Abbey in London.
It marked the unveiling of ten new statues of modern Christian martyrs – an
event full of remarkable significance. Westminster Abbey is, of course,
England’s most renowned ecclesiastical building. Its location in the heart
of the nation’s capital, the grandeur of its architecture, its thousand
years of continual worship, its multiple associations with the royal family
as the site of coronations, weddings and funerals, and its role as the
resting place of England’s great and good from monarchs to poets and an
Unknown Soldier – all combine to make the Abbey the most famous shrine of
England’s civil religion.

The decision, therefore, of the Abbey authorities to commission this new
group of sculptures was challenging and clearly deliberately so. For none
of those here commemorated was English, or indeed had any institutional
connections with the Church of England. Instead, this tribute was intended
to signify a wider vision of the Church by including a sample of men and
women from every part of the globe. Every continent is represented,
making this an emphatic statement of the Church’s universal witness.
Equally inclusive is the range of denominational affiliations, as also the
rank of these martyrs from Catholic Archbishop to humble Papuan catechist.

No less challenging is the fact that these men and women so honoured are
all contemporary or near contemporary figures. The intention is clearly to
mark the fact that the Church is called to remember not only the heroes and
heroines of the distant past, but to proclaim the continuity of this
witness into the present. Most challenging of all was the decision to
commemorate not the apparently successful leaders of the Church, but ten
individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice of dying for their faith. The
purpose is to declare that the twentieth century was a century of Christian
martyrdom, and indeed that the number of Christians who died for their
beliefs was greater in this century than in any previous period in the
history of the Church. This sobering message is one of which too few people
are aware. The tragedies here depicted are a tangible, if limited, reminder
of the price of faith in a violent world of suspicion, ideology and conflict.

This striking, if surely unpopular, testimony to the cost of contemporary
discipleship is all the more remarkable because of the infrequency with
which it has been undertaken. Since the Reformation, the Church of
England, like other Protestant churches, has dispensed with the idea or the
practice of commemorating saints and martyrs. No institutional machinery to
do so exists – in contrast to the elaborate procedures still adhered to by
the Roman Catholic Church. And although the Anglican Church still
upholds the doctrine of sanctity and venerates individual saints of earlier
centuries, it has no mechanism for adding to their number. Indeed martyrs
and martyrdom, to many people, suggested overtones of superstition or
fanaticism. Over the centuries, the evocation of martyrs in England,
particularly those of Protestants who died at the hand of Queen Mary in the
1550s, aroused political passions of a vitriolic, even violent, kind. In
the nineteenth century an enormous struggle took place in Oxford to erect a
suitable memorial to the martyrs, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley, burnt to
death in the heart of the university. It aroused such controversy as to
make a repetition of this commemoration seem unwise. So the decision of
the Westminster Abbey authorities aroused considerable interest but also
some anxious questioning. Such doubts may have been in part mitigated by
the fact that most of the names selected were the victims of those
politically repressive and anti-Christian forces, particularly Nazism and
Communism, which, by the 1990s, had been overthrown. This fact seemed to
give a final proof that these martyrs’ sacrifices had not been in vain.

The criteria used for their selection by the Abbey’s Dean and Chapter
(i.e. the clergy members of staff) have not been revealed. The process must
have been difficult and indeed invidious. Nevertheless it may surely be
regretted that none of their own countrymen was chosen, such as, for
example, the eminently eligible figure of Miss Jane Haining, who was the
only Scotswoman to be murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz.
Jane Haining grew up in the lowlands of Scotland, but as an adult
discovered an interest in the Christian Mission to the Jews. In 1932 she
received a call to go out and help the Church of Scotland Mission to the
Jews in Budapest, where she became the matron of the girls’ school and
hostel, which housed many pupils of Jewish background.
Hungarian is a difficult language to learn. But evidently, Jane Haining
succeeded in establishing warm contact with her charges, a feeling mutually
returned.

When war broke out in 1939, Jane Haining chose to remain in Hungary,
trusting in its neutrality. But as the tide of war swept across Europe, all
foreign civilians were advised to be evacuated. She refused to go, despite
the clear dangers. Finally in March 1944 German troops seized control of
Hungary. Almost immediately Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest to organize
the mass deportation of Jews to the killing fields of Poland. Jane
Haining saw the need to protect her charges. “If these children need me in
the days of sunshine”, she said,” how much more do they need me in the days
of darkness”.

Her courage was matched by the resolute action of a few other Hungarian
Protestants, such as the pastor of the Good Shepherd Church, who organized
an extensive rescue mission on behalf of the persecuted Jews. But the
Germans and their Hungarian fascist associates were ruthless. Jane Haining
was well known to be a foreigner. She was denounced as being a British spy,
for giving aid to escaped British prisoners-of-war, and above all for
helping the now unwanted Jews. As a result, in May, her school was raided
by the Hungarian police, and she was given fifteen minutes to get ready
before they took her away to jail.

On her arrival in Auschwitz, she was put in the women’s camp and had the
number 79467 tattooed on her arm. One last letter was received by her
friends in Budapest, asking for food. But on 17 August 1944, along with a
batch of Hungarian women, she was gassed. Subsequently her selfless
dedication to the Jewish children and her Christian faithfulness unto death
were remembered both in her home parish in Glasgow and at the Holocaust
Memorial Centre at Yad Washem in Jerusalem. And in 1984 a plaque was
placed on the wall of the Scottish church in Budapest, whose inscription
reads as follows:

“Remembering with eternal gratitude and reverence Miss Jane Haining
who in 1944 for her humaneness died as a martyr in Auschwitz.
The Jewish parish Budapest 1944-1984”

At the present time, the Protestant church most engaged with the
commemoration of twentieth century martyrs is the Evangelical Church of
Germany. Since 1990, when both the nation and the Evangelical Church were
again reunited, it has become feasible to consider recording the fates of
those victimized by the dictatorships prevailing in Germany between 1933
and 1989. To be sure, after 1945, some steps were taken to commemorate
those members, particularly of the minority Confessing Church, such as
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Schneider, for their deaths at the Nazis’
hands. But the widespread refusal of the majority of the population to come
to terms with their Nazi past, and the blanket of forgetfulness which
prevailed in those early years, made any adequate recognition almost
impossible. Too many German Evangelicals had given their uncritical and
fulsome support to the Nazi regime for any praise of its victims to be
welcome. Similarly, the Church’s compromises and accommodations with the
subsequent Communist dictatorship during the forty years of the German
Democratic Republic were a sad legacy. It led many Evangelicals to avoid
being reminded of the sacrifices of such men as Pastor Oskar Brüsewitz, who
burnt himself to death in protest against the regime’s religious policies
in 1976.
The changed political climate in recent years now makes it possible to
seek to compile a comprehensive and accurate listing of all German-speaking
martyrs of the German Evangelical Church during these fateful years. But
there remains an overtone of this being something of an attempt to rescue
the credibility of this Church after its chequered record over the last
century. As well, there is a need to emulate the parallel efforts of the
German Catholic Church, whose list of their martyrs occupies two large
volumes.

The criteria for selection are still being discussed. Since the
Evangelical Church, in contrast to the Catholics, has no continuing process
for denoting martyrs, it had to start more or less from scratch.
Agreement was quickly reached to make the period covered extend from 1917
to 1989, and also to include German-speaking Protestants not only in
Germany itself but in some of its outposts in eastern Europe. Researches
are now being undertaken not only in church archives, but also in newly
available government or police papers. The aim is to compile as accurate
and complete a historical record as possible. But over the years, the
perception has grown that the concept of martyrdom needs to be enlarged.

To limit it to the earlier presumption of a witness to Christ, who was
killed in upholding some particular article of faith or defended some
particular ecclesiastical institution or programme, now seems too narrow in
the face of the kind of oppression instituted by the twentieth century’s
racial and political dictatorships. The ideologically-based persecution
of the Churches by such regimes was instituted principally for their
upholding the cause of downtrodden minorities or opposing flagrant acts of
injustice. Therefore, participation in the defence of a wider spectrum of
Christian values, especially those relating to justice and peace, would
seem more persuasive as grounds for possible recognition as a modern
martyr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw this dilemma clearly in 1939. Germans had
the choice of “either willing the defeat of Germany in order that
Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation
and thereby destroying our civilization”. His decision for the former
alternative drove him to join the resistance movement and led directly to
his eventual death. But such discipleship involved political opposition and
even engaging in acts of violence, such as the assassination of the
dictator Hitler. For the majority of conservative German Evangelicals such
a stance was inadmissible. When, as late as 1960, one senior Lutheran
bishop was asked to unveil a memorial plaque in Bonhoeffer’s honour, he
refused to do so on the grounds that Bonhoeffer was not a Christian martyr
but a political traitor, and deserved the fate he got.

Today there is greater sensitivity that the boundaries defining martyrdom
should not be so narrowly drawn.

Such an extension of the criteria to include those murdered while
struggling against political oppression, however, raises further
difficulties. In the case of the German Resistance Movement, many of
those who lost their lives had only tenuous connections with the church, or
were prompted by purely secular or nationalist motives. Should the Church
thus exclude them from any listing of martyrs? Is a revolt of conscience
enough, especially when this can only be a subjective judgment on the part
of the later beholder? And where whole groups or minorities were
persecuted or put to death, such as Jews, gypsies, the mentally handicapped
or homosexuals, can the church claim that their nominal membership makes
them eligible? Should Edith Stein, for example, gassed in Auschwitz in
1942, be remembered as a Catholic nun or as a Jewish woman? Or does the
definition of martyrdom require some positive and conscious acceptance of
the risk of death, as a terrible alternative governing behaviour.

Particularly problematical is the question of suicide. Was Pastor
Brüsewitz’s deliberate act of self-immolation an act to which the church
should later give its approval and praise, and by implication reprove
others who did not choose such a path? Or take the case of the famous
German writer Jochen Klepper who committed suicide with his whole family in
1942 out of fear that they would be committed to deportation and death
under the Nazi racial edicts. Should such a death be seen as participating
in the sufferings of a persecuted group, and hence be worthy of the name of
martyrdom.

As Ursula Büttner of Hamburg recently pointed out, these are some of the
issues currently engaging the scholars of the German Evangelical Church’s
historical commission. If the traditional definition of martyrdom now seems
too limited and exclusive, the newer perspectives also cause problems
because they lack boundaries or exactitude. Even as the search for
accurate biographical details continues, it will be necessary to find a
sustainable but comprehensive concept, which will carry conviction among
church members, and provide inspiration to the whole church in the future.

2) In Memoriam, Kurt Nowak, Leipzig
To mark the death at the end of last year of Professor Kurt Leipzig, the
most distinguished church historian in east Germany, a ceremony was held at
the University of Leipzig recently at which his Collected Essays were
presented to his widow and to the Dean of the Theological Faculty, and the
following tribute paid to his memory.

Wie Herausgeber Prof. Dr. Jochen-Christoph Kaiser (Marburg) auf der
Gedenkveranstaltung sagte, habe sich Prof. Nowak seit Mitte der 70er
Jahre für die Errichtung einer publizistischen Plattform für Themen der
kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte engagiert, und zwar als gesamtdeutsch zu
realisierendes Projekt, mit dem die engeren Grenzen der traditionellen
Kirchengeschichte überschritten werden sollten. Band 1 erschien 1988,
Band 30 wird Ende 2003 herauskommen. Anspruch war und ist, einer
größeren Öffentlichkeit die historische Ortsbestimmung des Christentums in
der Zeitgeschichte (vom Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart)
zu verdeutlichen, was nur im Zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen
Geschichte, also mit politischen, sozialen, kulturellen und religiösen
Fragestellungen geschehen kann. Insgesamt lässt sich feststellen, dass
die Grenzüberschreitung von der Theologie zur Geschichte, wie sie von
Prof. Nowak und dem Leipziger Institut für Kirchengeschichte praktiziert
wurde, zur Etablierung der kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte als Disziplin mit
eigenem Anspruch und Gewicht Wesentliches beigetragen hat.
Zuvor hatten Dekan Prof. Dr. Dr. Günther Wartenberg, Rektor Prof. Dr.
Volker Bigl und Prof. Dr. Martin Greschat (Münster) in Worten des
Gedenkens Person und Werk des viel zu früh verstorbenen Historikers,
Theologen, Universitätspredigers und Schriftstellers gewürdigt. Immer
wieder wurden dabei sein enzyklopädisches Wissen, sein Ideenreichtum,
seine Kreativität, seine ausgeprägte Interdisziplinarität hervorgehoben.

In DDR-Zeiten sei er bei aller klugen Taktik gelegentlicher Konzessionen
selbstbewusst gegen enge Grenzziehungen und Einengungen für sein Fach,
für die Theologie und die historischen Wissenschaften insgesamt
angegangen und habe er sich so ein wissenschaftliches Wirken mit
Ausstrahlung über Leipzig und die DDR hinaus gesichert. Und für die Zeit
nach dem Umbruch von 1989/90 konnte Prof. Bigl feststellen, dass Kurt
Nowak den wissenschaftlichen Ruf der Universität Leipzig im In- und
Ausland gemehrt und er den Anfang gemacht habe, die Theologie in einer
säkularen Gesellschaft wieder stärker in der Mitte der Universität zu
verorten. Dies sei zugleich sein Vermächtnis an die heutige Universität.

3) Book reviews
a) Haim Genizi, Holocaust, Israel, and Canadian Protestant Churches.
Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press 2002 xvi,320 pp.
Can$ 49.95. ISBN 0-7735-7401-0

Haim Genizi is an Israeli scholar who has already written two notable
books on American attitudes towards refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe. The current
work can be seen as a sequel. While it concentrates on the Canadian Protestant
churches, it describes the responses to Judaism and the Jewish people, and in particular
to the fortunes of the State of Israel in the fifty years after its
foundation in 1948, which are shared by several other church bodies. It is
hence a complementary study to Alan Davies’ and Marilyn Nefsky’s 1997 book
How silent were the Churches? Canadian Protestantism and the Jewish plight
during the Nazi Era, as well as to Paul Merkley’s recent work Christian
Attitudes towards the State of Israel. It is too bad that a similar
account of Catholic responses has still to be written.

Genizi believes that Canadian Protestant attitudes during the Holocaust,
and their critical views of the State of Israel, can be accounted for,
mainly but not exclusively, by Christian antisemitism, whether consciously
or unconsciously. The initial Protestant opinions of Judaism and the State
of Israel were more theologically- than politically-based. But over the
years, this position has been reversed. The Protestants’ sense of guilt
about their failure to do more for the Jewish victims of Nazism led to a
reassessment of their inherited anti-Judaic intolerance, and to a striking
change of attitudes towards Judaism. By the 1970s, this major alteration
in mainstream Protestantism, as also in the Roman Catholic Church, saw a
new appreciation of the Jewish heritage, an abandonment of Church
supersessionism and a revision of missionary approaches.

On the other hand, Protestant views of Israel have also changed markedly –
to a much more critical stance. Particularly after 1967, sympathy with
the Palestinians has been uppermost in the majority of Canadian Protestant
publications. Genizi concentrates especially on the largest Protestant
community, the United Church of Canada and on its journal The Observer.
Four central and detailed, though somewhat repetitive, chapters outline the
opinions of this journal’s editor, A.C. Forrest, whose outspoken criticisms
of Israel during the 1970s led to a serious poisoning of relations between
his supporters and the Canadian Jewish community.

The United Church of Canada saw, and sees, itself as the bastion of
liberal democratic views. Under Forrest, its journal became a champion for
the underdog, namely the victimized Palestinians. The one-sidedness of the
approach, and the violence of the language used, was bound to be offensive
to Canadian Jews, whose “exile psychology” led them to see any Gentile
criticism of Israel as yet another example of traditional Christian
antisemitism. And yet, the United Church had a commendable record of
shedding earlier dogmatism and entrenched attitudes. Its strictures were
hence derived from ethical rather than theological principles. Its leaders
shared a universalist vision of world peace. The Middle East, they hoped,
could be a region where the wolf and the lamb would feed together, and
where “righteousness and praise would spring forth before all the nations”.
But the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and its treatment of the
civilian population, seemed only to rekindle ancient hatreds. As one
leading United Churchman lamented: “The Holy Land might become the Unholy
Land . . . since . . . that which was intended for the healing of the
nations will only prove to be a curse and an abomination”.

For the United Church, both political and ecumenical considerations led to
strong support for the Arab cause, ignoring the Israelis’ justifications.
Its Councils abandoned the kind of balanced approach which most of the
other Canadian churches sought to adopt, at least until the 1980s. Genizi
rightly deplores the one-sidedness of these pronouncements with the double
standard of morality, which condemned Israeli violence against the
Palestinians while excusing Arab violence in return.

Yet, at the same time, Genizi is aware that Canadian Protestant circles
are not unanimous, but rather display contradictory views over the Middle
East. On the one side, many Protestants learnt from the Holocaust that
they should repudiate the sad legacy of theological anti-Judaism of earlier
centuries. After 1945, the influence of the noted Swiss theologian, Karl
Barth, played a considerable role in creating a much more positive image of
Judaism. There was a renewal of interest in the Hebrew Scriptures, i.e. the
Old Testament, and a recognition of the significance of the land in Jewish
history and thinking. These factors led to important support for the State
of Israel and for its desire to live in peace within secure and defensible
borders.

On the other hand, other Protestants learnt a different lesson from the
Holocaust. They believed that the churches’ lack of concern about the
Jewish plight was due, not so much to entrenched antisemitism, as to the
pietistic tendency to limit Christian discipleship to the search for
individual salvation. The time had come, they now believed, for the church
to become far more active in its political witness, both at home and
abroad. Building on the tradition of the social gospel, this meant
resolute stands on behalf of the poor, the needy, the refugees and the
oppressed. Canadian Protestants, particularly from the 1960s, took their
cue from the World Council of Churches, believing that they were called to
be “the voice of the voiceless”. The implications of such a stand in terms
of the Middle East are obvious.

Since these opposing and incompatible views within the Protestant ranks
appeal to equally valid theological premises, it has been impossible to
find a reconciling formula. In fact, the situation over the past decades is
and has been a sore trial to Christian consciences. The complications and
ambiguities of the Middle East have been a constant source of conflict and
frustration. Critical observers are right to suspect the tendency to
misuse faith perspectives for one-sided political purposes. Genizi could
have given more attention to this complexity in many Protestant minds
For other Canadian Protestants, however, their humanitarian, if somewhat
simplistic, sympathies for the underdog in the conditions of military
occupation and oppression, have propelled them to express undifferentiated
support for the Palestinians. Their leaders’ dilemma has been how to
express strong criticism of the Israeli government’s policies without
arousing the suspicion that they are rehashing traditional antisemitic
attitudes. Genizi’s careful narrative of how this dilemma has been faced
is most commendable. So too is his acquaintance with and understanding of
Canadian ecclesiastical structures and personalities. This lends extra
credibility to his analysis of the attitudes of such leading churchmen as
Claris Silcox, E.M.Howse, A.C.Forrest and Archbishop Michael Peers. These
descriptions are skillfully drawn from the extensive archival sources
Genizi has consulted, supplemented by a few personal interviews. We could
wish that more of these, from a larger and more representative sample of
Protestant opinion beyond the Toronto centre, had been included. These
would surely have shown even more clearly the ambivalent attitudes of
Canadian Protestants, which are notably shared by other secular sections of
Canadian opinion.

Genizi makes clear his regret that Canadian Protestants have so constantly
expressed their support of Israel’s opponents in the Middle East. Since he
can’t admit the validity of these criticisms of his own government, he
attributes such attacks to an underlying Christian antisemitism, and thus
reinforces the view long held by many sections of the Canadian Jewish
community.

But had he taken a wider perspective, he would have recognized that such a
stance is fully consistent with the approach towards the broad range of
international affairs adopted by the Canadian Protestant churches for the
past half century. First and foremost has been their fear of nuclear war
and the use of weapons of mass destruction. Hence the priority given to
the need for world disarmament, and consequently the support for
international peace-keeping through the UN. Second, Canadians have
expressed their strong opposition to military interventions, especially by
the United States in support of its allies. Hence the resolute Canadian
campaign against any involvement in Vietnam or Iraq. Third, their sympathy
with victimized societies can be seen in Latin America in Cuba and
Nicaragua, or in Africa, for Biafra and Ethiopia. Canadian Protestants
have vigorously combated racism, especially in South Africa; they have
protested against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia;
Their stance in the Middle East is therefore all part of this
moralistic-humanitarian vision of world peace, prompted by Christian
idealism. This view refuses to endorse such concepts as “Realpolitik” or
to support politically expedient compromises. Such a vision necessarily
leads to much frustration, when its ideals are not achieved. But the
Protestant watchword is: hope; its characteristic failing is: naivete. By
mobilizing church opinion, debating resolutions, writing pamphlets,
lobbying politicians, these church activists campaign year in year out for
a better world. If the policies of the Israeli government seem to have
thwarted such a desirable goal, the consequent criticisms should be seen as
the product, not of Christian antisemitism, but of heartfelt
disappointment. Nevertheless, despite all the complexities and
ambiguities of the Middle East situation, Canadian Protestants continue to
believe that one day their goals of tolerance, peace, justice and
righteousness will prevail. These are, after all, Jewish goals too.

Genizi’s well-written survey of Canadian Protestant opinion deserves to be
widely read, if only because the issues he analyses are being discussed in
many other western Protestant communities. His narrative of the debate
shows clearly the continuing difficulty of how to apply Christian
principles in the circumstances of seemingly incompatible political
hostilities and irreconcilable antipathies of the Middle East. Genizi has
given us a thoughtful account of this ongoing but unresolved controversy.
Both Canadians and non-Canadians will benefit from his insights.
JSC
b) Amos Cresswell and Maxwell Tow, Dr Franz Hildebrandt. Mr Valiant-for
Truth. Macon, Georgia: Smyth and Helwys Publishing Inc. 2000. 254 pp.

Franz Hildebrandt, a close associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, has the good
fortune to have two biographies, one in German, the other in English.
Holger Roggelin’s well-researched study (reviewed here Vol.VI, no 5 – May
2000) described Hildebrandt’s early years until his enforced exile from
Germany. This memoir by two former colleagues, one British, one American,
together traces Hildebrandt’s subsequent career in their respective
countries. As can be expected, the first chapters recapitulate the German
background.

Hildebrandt’s strong attachment to the Confessing Church, his service as
Niemöller’s curate, and his partly Jewish background, made him a marked
man. In 1937 he was arrested by the Gestapo while holding a service. After
a short imprisonment, he left the country immediately, unable to return.
His first refuge was in England, where he moved to Cambridge to study
theology at Ridley College. At the same time, he gathered together the
German Protestant refugees in the city and acted as their pastor in a
specially forged congregation. The outbreak of war in 1939 only increased
the personal and psychological stress faced by these exiles. Their
attachment to their homeland was shattered, even as they faced suspicion or
worse amongst their new hosts. In 1940, like most “enemy aliens”,
Hildebrandt was interned on the Isle of Man. Fortunately the support of
such Anglican leaders as Bishop Bell of Chichester secured his release
after a few months. From then on, he was very much engaged in his pastoral
duties. At the same time he wrestled with the theological issues caused by
the war, especially pacifism to which he clung resolutely. The same German
theological thoroughness made him impatient with the compromises of
Anglican theology, especially of leading liberals such as Canon Charles
Raven, one of his benefactors in Cambridge. The resulting clash was perhaps
the reason why he refused to accept the offer of Anglican ordination.
Instead he gave his allegiance to the Methodists, having been much moved by
the piety of the Wesleys and their hymns.

He readily believed that the English Luther could be found in Charles Wesley.
Hildebrandt found the Methodist fellowship and his charge in Cambridge to
be warm and welcoming. His idealism for the Church was however matched by
a certain rigour and intolerance of error, especially theological. It was
hardly surprising that in 1953 he should have been recruited for a teaching
post at the Methodist Drew University in New Jersey, and served there for a
number of years. His Lutheran and biblical background complemented his
vision of spreading scriptural holiness throughout the land. But in the
triumphalist and materialist culture of the United States, such a goal
meant hard striving. Many of his students found Hildebrandt’s courses too
demanding. But he was convinced that the true Christians were those who
discovered the Bible as the living word of God, placing it at the centre of
their lives.
Unfortunately Hildebrandt’s term at Drew University came to an end in 1967
over a heated dispute with an autocratic President. The majority of his
colleagues in theology resigned, bringing to an end much of the impetus he
had sought to establish. He retreated to Scotland, but found himself
embroiled in an equally critical debate over the future of the Methodist
Church and its possible merger with the Church of England. As before, he
refused any compromise over possible re-ordination of Methodist ministers
and remained obdurate against any watering down of doctrines through
‘liberty of interpretation’. Along with other dissentients, he stood firm
on the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, solo Christo, solo gratia.
In the end the proposed scheme of unity failed, but it led Hildebrandt to
resign from the Methodist ministry amidst considerable acrimony.
He ended his days as a part-time associate in the Church of Scotland, but
never achieved the recognition he deserved from any ecclesiastical
structure. Cresswell and Tow pay tribute to his strengths. They suggest
that his experience of the German Confessing Church Struggle made him a
resolute opponent of any misuse of power by church or secular authorities.
He was therefore incisively critical of institutional expediency – in
short a Mr. Valiant-for-Truth. It was a stance which required courage but
did not bring popularity. But like his model the Wesleys, he could be
upheld by the certainty of righteousness. And this was his reward.
JSC
4) Review article: With the title “Connecting the Church and the Shoah”,
Professor Konrad Repgen, the doyen of German Catholic Church Historians,
has written an extensive and critical review of Michael Phayer,The Catholic
Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, in the recent issue of Catholic
Historical Review, Vol LXXXVIII, no 3, July 2002, p 546-553.

With best wishes to you all in this autumnal season.
John S.Conway
Jconway@interchange.ubc.ca