Tag Archives: Gerhard Besier

Review of Gerhard Besier, ed., “Intimately Associated for Many Years”: George K. A. Bell’s and Willem A. Visser’t Hooft’s Common Life-Work in the Service of the Church Universal – Mirrored in Their Correspondence

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Review of Gerhard Besier, ed., “Intimately Associated for Many Years”: George K. A. Bell’s and Willem A. Visser’t Hooft’s Common Life-Work in the Service of the Church Universal – Mirrored in Their Correspondence, Parts 1 and 2 (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2015), ISBN: 978-1-4438-8006-0 and 978-1-4438-8011-4.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Bishop George Bell was the stalwart champion in the Church of England promoting ecumenical relations with the other churches of Europe and North America throughout the nearly thirty years of his episcopate from 1929-1958. He held leading positions in innumerable committees, councils and conferences, and in 1937, during the world meeting in Oxford of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, was a strong advocate for joining with Faith and Order, in order to found a World Council of Churches, which took place in 1938. At the same time it was agreed that this new Council (still in process of formation) should be established in Geneva, and that a young Dutch theologian W.A.Visser ‘t Hooft (Vim), who had served for several years in the Geneva scene as General Secretary of the World Student Christian Federation, should be appointed as General Secretary. Visser ‘t Hooft was far more of a General than a Secretary—I knew him personally—and brought unrivalled resourcefulness and a resolute determination to see his ideas realized, for the best part of thirty years. This was the beginning of a partnership between Bell and Visser ‘t Hooft, who early on struck up a strong and harmonious relationship. They are rightly described in the book’s title as being “intimately associated for many years”.

The exchanges by post or telegrams recorded in these volumes are largely drawn from the Geneva archives of the World Council of Churches or from the voluminous Bell papers, now deposited in the Lambeth Palace library in London. The first volume covers the period up to 1949, and the second the final years of Bell’s life up to 1958. The editing by Gerhard Besier is very helpful, since his footnotes give the biographical details of all persons mentioned, as well as bibliographical references to the many scholarly books relating to their endeavors. (There are, however, aggravating lapses in the proof-reading and printing of the English text.) Besier’s introduction is reproduced from the chapter he contributed to The Church and Humanity: The Life and Work of George Bell, 1883-1958 (p. 169-194), edited in 2012 by Andrew Chandler.

Many of these exchanges have to do with the plans for the various meetings of World Council bodies, and discussions about the membership, the place and date, as well as the content. These documents are however not too informative about the results. Obviously when the two men met at such meetings, they had intense verbal discussions and made significant decisions about the World Council’s operations. But these were not recorded in their correspondence at the time, and so are missing from these volumes. This is particularly noticeable with regard to such highly significant meetings as the First Constituent Assembly held in Amsterdam in 1948, when Bell became Chairman of the WCC’s Central Committee. While these documents discuss at length the preparations for this Assembly in August 1948 (p. 365-428), they provide no indication of the important deliberations and decisions taken on that occasion. The same is true for the Second Assembly, held in 1954 in Evanston, Illinois. Equally regrettable is the absence of documents relating to the important meeting in Stuttgart in October 1945, at which both Bell and Visser ‘t Hooft were present, and at which the famous Declaration of Guilt was issued (p. 287-94). Obviously both Bell and Vim played an active part and had extensive discussions with the German leaders, including Martin Niemöller, for whom they had been praying ever since his first incarceration in 1937. But they left no further record of their deliberations or their conclusions about this conference or its historic significance in their correspondence. An equally striking omission is the exchange between Bell and Vim about Bell’s journey to Sweden in May 1942, his meeting there with Bonhoeffer, and the information he gained about the German resistance, which the Bishop then passed on to the British Foreign Secretary, asking for some public gesture of support be given to the anti-Nazi forces in Germany. Eden’s refusal was conveyed to Visser ‘t Hooft in the notable telegram sent by Bell on July 23, 1942: “Interest undoubted, but deeply regret no reply possible”. (Bell’s message is discussed on p. 158 of W.A. Visser ‘t Hooft, Memoirs (London: SCM Press, 1973).) But this calamitous blow to Bell’s hopes for some gesture of support for the German resistance is not mentioned in Besier’s work. In fact, this first volume is silent for the whole period of November 1941 to August 1942.

It would have been helpful if the editor could have inserted short passages to fill such gaps. He could also have directed the reader to look at both of the biographies of Bell by Canon Jasper (George Bell, Bishop of Chichester (London: Oxford University Press,1967)) and Andrew Chandler (George Bell, Bishop of Chichester: Church, State, and Resistance in the Age of Dictatorship (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), also Visser ‘t Hooft’s Memoirs (1973), as well as such comprehensive histories as A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517-1948 (London: SPCK, 1954), edited by Ruth Rouse and Stephen Neil, and its sequel The Ecumenical Advance: A History of the Ecumenical Movement, 1948-1968 (Geneva: WCC, 1986), edited by Harold Fey. Unless these more complete sources are available to be consulted, the usefulness of these two volumes alone will be limited. Libraries may well consider whether the expense is justified.

However, the value of these exchanges is that they fill in the details of the frequent consultations between these church leaders. In particular, they provide information about how the two men dealt with the three principal obstacles they faced in these years. The first was the fear expressed by many churchmen that this new World Council would evolve into a vast ecumenical enterprise which would swallow up the individual entities in some sort of super-church. The second fear, expressed by many more Orthodox leaders, was that this new World Council would produce a new doctrine of Christianity which would override the traditions and individual heritages of these Protestant or Orthodox churches. The third obstacle was the refusal of the largest Christian body, the Roman Catholic Church, to be associated in any way with this new venture. This refusal meant that the vision of a united Christendom, strongly urged by Bell, was thwarted, and still remains incomplete. Not until the Second Vatican Council, i.e. several years after Bell’s death, did the Roman Catholic authorities show a more tolerant and cooperative attitude. But the World Council has yet to overcome the barrier of Rome’s reluctance to belong to this wider ecumenical fraternity.

Nevertheless, it would be true to say that, during the period from 1938 to 1958, i.e. during the fruitful years of cooperation between Bell and Visser ‘t Hooft, the World Council moved from a tentative and provisional beginning to becoming the acknowledged chief instrument and channel of the ecumenical movement. The correspondence contained in the second volume spells out the contexts of these years from 1950 to 1958, including the preparations for the second Assembly meeting in the United States in 1954, at which point Bell resigned his position as Chairman of the Central Committee, and was promoted to Honorary President of the Council. But, as this correspondence shows, he continued to be very actively engaged in the affairs of the Council, even after his retirement in 1958 from the Chichester diocese. In fact he took part in a meeting of the Central Committee in Denmark, and preached a self-critical sermon there only two months before his untimely death in October 1958. The volume concludes with two moving tributes to Bell’s achievements written by Visser ‘t Hooft shortly after Bell’s funeral.

Conference Report: “Ecumenical Cooperation and World Politics”. The 2016 Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History Conference

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

Conference Report: “Ecumenical Cooperation and World Politics”. The 2016 Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History Conference, Helsinki, October 26-28, 2016

By Robert P. Ericksen

On Oct. 26-28, 2016, Professors Aila Lauha and Mikko Ketola of the Theological Faculty at the University of Helsinki hosted an international conference on the topic, “Ecumenical Cooperation and World Politics.” This conference also served as the annual meeting of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, with the papers to be published in that journal in 2017.

Sessions at this conference focused primarily on the twentieth century, a time when conflicts ranged from World War I and World War II to the Cold War and its occasional outbreaks of considerable violence. This also was the period in which Christian churches struggled to overcome centuries of bickering among themselves with a push toward international ecumenism. Could Christians working together reduce the scourge of war? Could ecumenical Christians help resolve the problems of racism, colonialism, or the social and cultural changes embodied in Western modernity?

These would have been very large questions to resolve in a two-day conference. Within those constraints, however, sessions probed a few specific examples within the ecumenical experience. Also, given the setting in Helsinki, there emerged a slight Nordic tilt to the proceedings, with four of the fourteen presenters describing Nordic actors within the broader ecumenical movement. One further distinction within the program bears mention. The two main days of the conference were divided between a first day focused on “Ecumenical responsibilities—dreams, utopias and realities,” and a second day on the more sobering subtheme, “Ecumenism facing the challenges of nationalism, chauvinism and extremism.”

Andrea Strübind delivered the first paper of this conference, “The International Fellowship of Reconciliation as an ecumenical and interfaith forerunner for human rights.” Two founders of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR), the German pacifist Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze and the English pacifist Henry Hodgkin, met on 3 August 1914, the day before Great Britain entered World War I. These two men committed themselves to the principle that Christian nations should not turn to war against each other. Although they had little or no chance of stopping the carnage to come, they created an organization that still exists and now can be seen as a precursor of and participant in the broader ecumenical movement. Strübind focused her paper on a little-researched aspect of the FoR—its influence on the American Civil Rights Movement. As early as the1930s, the FoR began bringing Gandhi’s tactic of non-violent civil disobedience to questions of civil rights and economic rights in the United States. Bayard Ruskin, for example, a later ally of Martin Luther King, Jr, began working fulltime for the FoR in 1942 and pursued this theme. In the mid-1950s, Glenn Smiley, a Methodist pastor and a representative of the FoR, moved to Montgomery, Alabama. He and the FoR helped develop and train activists in the non-violent tactics that proved successful in the Montgomery bus boycott and then spread across the South.

Gerhard Besier followed with a paper on “80 Years WCC—Theological, Political and Societal Ambiguities.” The “ambiguities” involve the ways in which ecumenism gets caught up in issues that seem unavoidably political and/or cultural, rather than simply religious. For example, when the interwar ecumenical movement tried to deal with German Protestantism after 1933, it first tried to work with the official church leadership. Gradually, however, Barth, Bonhoeffer, and others convinced ecumenists to accept the point of view of the Confessing Church, with its rejection of radically Nazi elements within the official Protestant Church. That led to the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt in 1945, followed by early postwar efforts to rebuild and strengthen ecumenism. Quickly, however, the Cold War impinged and once again ecumenical Christians faced political questions. John Foster Dulles, an active lay person and son of a Presbyterian minister, imagined the Federal Council of Churches (FCC, later the NCC) working within the WCC toward “a just and durable peace” in the American mold. The Czech theologian, Josef Hromadka, argued that socialism should be understood as the truly Christian stance. Some theologians in Eastern Europe both collaborated with their own regimes and critiqued the WCC as a voice for NATO. Participation by the Russian Orthodox Church established in the 1960s added further questions about the mix of politics and religion. On the one hand, one might hope that ecumenical Christendom could find a prophetic voice based upon Christian values. In the worst case, however, some might see Christian ecumenism as a theology of convenience, bent to the need for getting along.

Gerhard Ringshausen’s presentation gave a partial answer to Besier’s question. On the topic, “George Bell’s political engagement in ecumenical context,” he describes the Bishop of Chichester’s response to the “German question” before and during World War II as both theological and political. Totalitarian restraint on freedom to preach must be opposed, he said. An “ethic of peace” should include equal dignity for all. Bombing policy should make a distinction between military and civilian targets. While consistent with Christian values, these choices can also be built upon natural law. Bell gave the November Pogrom of 1938 a theological response, however, with the suggestion that non-Aryan pastors and their wives should be welcomed in England as members of the Christian community in need.

The next session grew out of a research program for PhD students directed by Aila Lauha at the University of Helsinki, “The Ecumenical Movement and Cold War Politics.” The title of this session expressed the essence of an underlying theme for ecumenism: “Can the World Council of Churches Change the World?” The conditional answer presented by products of Lauha’s program seems to be, at least in limited ways, yes. Juha Meriläinen presented on “The Reconstruction of European Churches as a WCC Programme.” War had left Europe with massive destruction. Early American attitudes exacerbated this, with, for example, a sign at a U.S. military canteen in 1945 in Berlin: “Do not feed the civilians. Put what you do not eat into the garbage can.” The Americans soon changed their minds, however, as President Truman worried about saving Europe from the USSR. One result was the Marshall Plan, which poured American aid into postwar Europe. W.A. Visser ‘t Hooft and the WCC also saw human need in postwar Europe. The WCC did its part, with a program that invested $6.2 million, a sort of counterpart to the Marshall Plan. Matti Peiponen spoke on “The Commission of the Churches on International Affairs,” judging it a success, especially in the early postwar years. It had a voice in the WCC and also in the UN. In the latter case, this commission made sure that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights included the right to freedom of thought, expression, and confession, rather than merely the “freedom to worship,” as preferred by the USSR. Antti Laine spoke on “The Programme to Combat Racism.” Here he brought the story forward by two decades, reflecting on the WCC Assembly at Uppsala in 1968, a meeting where Martin Luther King’s place on the list of speakers fell to his assassination that spring. The turbulence implicit in King’s assassination spoke to a new world, with widespread activism among young people and with questions about racism in the United States as well as other parts of the world. The WCC focus on race advocated action, not just discussion, and the action included controversial grants made to sometimes radical organizations opposed to racial injustice. These sessions on WCC programs provoked a lively discussion in the Q and A, especially involving the question of theology, which was de-emphasized (if not actually banned) at Uppsala in 1968. According to Laine, however, leaders of the WCC considered their program against racism a success, proving the Christian ecumenical movement to be a credible player amidst the widely accepted idea that racism represented an evil to be opposed.

Katharina Kunter stayed in the decade of the Uppsala Assembly for her final presentations on this first day, “Revolutionary Hopes and Global Transformations: The World Council of Churches in the 1960s.” She actually called her timeframe the “long decade” of the 1960s, beginning as early as the mid-1950s and continuing well into the 1970s. Uppsala in 1968 represented a turning point. A Theology of Liberation developed in the 1970s. White men in the WCC were replaced by increasing numbers of women and people of color. Collective human rights replaced the Western emphasis on individual human rights. The geographical locus began shifting from west to east and from north to south. Some conservatives in Europe and the United States viewed this as the end of Christianity in Christian ecumenism. Some churches withdrew their membership. Under the theme for this first day of the conference, “dreams, utopias and realities,” this stage reached by the WCC in the 1970s seemed to contain a little bit of each.

Morning sessions on the second day included papers on ecumenism in Finland presented by Aila Lauha and Mikko Ketola. Professor Lauha described the early years of the Reformation when Finland was a Swedish possession, with the Lutheran faith declared the one true faith and Catholics known primarily as opponents during times of war. Even during the nineteenth century, when Finland was a province of Russia, the legal role of the Russian Tsar did not impinge on the dominant place of Lutheranism within Finland. By the 1920s, 95 percent of Finns remained within the dominant Lutheran faith and an ecumenical group formed in 1917 primarily involved Lutherans talking with each other. With a very strong nationalism in 1920s Finland, newly granted autonomy in 1917, ecumenism was seen largely as a threat of foreign influence, and the very few Catholics in Finland were widely suspected of disloyalty. After World War II, Lutherans in Finland gradually moved toward an acceptance of ecumenism. This was based upon the development of cross-denominational theological conversations. Also, suspicions against Catholics diminished with the dramatic changes developed at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. A Joint Declaration on Justification in 1999 helped solidify the Finnish respect for Catholics, so that by the turn of the century a modern, multicultural acceptance of ecumenism became the norm in Finland. Mikko Ketola picked up on this story of rapprochement between Finnish Lutherans and the Catholic Church in his paper, “Finland—Ecumenical Wonderland?” He noted that a small conversation began in 1967, when representatives of the Roman Catholic and the Finnish Orthodox Churches were invited to the Finnish celebration of the 450^thanniversary of the Reformation. More importantly, three Finnish Lutheran bishops made a first visit to Rome in 1985, during the papacy of John Paul II, and Finnish bishops have returned to Rome annually since. These past three decades have marked a period in which Finnish acceptance of and enthusiasm for ecumenism has increased dramatically.

Anders Jarlert began the afternoon session with “Nathan Söderblom and Nationalism—Riga, Uppsala, and Ruhr.” Many scholars view Söderblom as an internationalist, rather than a nationalist. Jarlert acknowledged that Söderblom worked for international cooperation and peace, especially in Europe, and that he was an important figure in the international ecumenical movement. However, Söderblom also had a very strong sense of his Swedish roots and a concern for the wellbeing of Sweden. Using numerous examples, Jarlert showed how these two realities can coexist in one person. Historians make a mistake when they try to find the right box into which to place a complex figure, he argued. Historical actors rarely fit so precisely into those boxes where we are tempted to place them.

The final session in this conference included three somewhat disparate topics. Aappo Laitinen spoke on “Religion and politics in Malta during the interwar years: between ‘Protestant’ Britain and the Holy See.” This story involves a complicated Catholic-Protestant clash, with a largely Catholic population on Malta, but British political control since the Napoleonic wars. Hanna-Maija Ketola spoke on “Strengthening the Alliance through Church Connections: The Church of England and the Russian Orthodox Church during WWII.” This involves a side story to the British-Soviet alliance during World War II, an unexpected alliance occasioned by Hitler’s decision to invade the USSR. A Church of England delegation visited their Russian Orthodox counterparts in 1943, hoping to use an ecumenical conversation as part of the connection that would solidify the political and military alliance of the two nations. This visit produced press reports that exaggerated the extent of religious freedom in the USSR, the sort of misunderstanding perhaps useful during the war itself, but part of the rapid separation between Russia and the West after Allied victory in 1945. Finally, Villa Jalovaara spoke on “Nordic bishops’ meetings during the Cold War.” Beginning in the 1920s, bishops from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden began meeting every third year. World War II interrupted this practice, as Danish and Norwegian bishops necessarily saw Germany as their enemy, but Finland most feared the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, these nations divided up between Norway, Denmark, and Iceland as members of NATO, with Sweden and Finland non-aligned, and with Finland maintaining a “friendly” relationship with the USSR. Although these differences of alignment made it difficult to produce joint statements, at least these bishops continued to meet regularly throughout the Cold War.

I would encourage readers interested in these topics to look for the fall edition of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte in 2017, when refined versions of these papers will be available in print.

Conference Report: Faith and the First World War, University of Glasgow, 21-23 July 2016

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 3 (September 2016)

Conference Report: Faith and the First World War, University of Glasgow, 21-23 July 2016

By Geoff Jackson, Ambrose University

In late July, I had the opportunity to participate in the “Faith and the First World War” conference at the University of Glasgow. The conference explored the wide diversity and significance of religious faith for those who experienced the First World War, addressing themes such as faith in the armed forces and on the home front, religion, war resistance and the peace crusade, as well as the role of religion in remembrance.

The keynote address was delivered by Michael Snape of Durham University, a leading Anglican historian, who delivered the fascinating paper “From Flanders to Helmand: Chaplaincy, Faith and Religious Change in the British Army, 1914-2014.” While commenting on the obvious differences between the ways wars have been fought from the First World War to present-day conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, he argued that the role of chaplains was largely unchanged. He demonstrated convincingly that the relationship of faith to soldiers was still as important today as it was 100 years ago. This idea of faith and soldiers was the dominant theme of the conference, and ran throughout most of the presentations.

The papers covered a broad range of themes ranging from discussion of the use of the Old Testament in mobilizing Germans for the war effort to comparative studies on how the Scottish and Irish Reformed churches participated in the First World War. Gerhard Besier of the Technical University of Dresden presented on “Harmonizing Conflicting Demands and Emotions: Christian Believers during WWI.” Cyril Pearce of the University of Leeds examined Christian war resisters and their protests during the war. Pearce has mined war documents, letters, images, tribunal records and diaries to create a list of over 16,000 First World War conscientious objectors. He has also begun mapping these names, where possible, to identify communities were conscientious objection was more prevalent.

Another excellent paper was British archivist James W. Fleming’s “‘All war being contrary to the spirit and teaching of Jesus Christ I could take no part in its prosecution’: Faith and Conscientious Objection in the First World War.” Fleming analyzed conscientious objector applications–both those that were accepted and those that were denied. This could be a valuable source for those interested in studying the topic.

My (Geoff Jackson’s) paper examined the role of Canadian chaplains as part of the larger British Expeditionary Force. It examined the role of Church of England chaplains through the optics of a transnational study to demonstrate that Anglican chaplains, as part of the same religious organization, played similar but distinct roles in various national contexts. The paper argued that, depending on which national army the chaplains were working under, they had different objectives, motivations, outside influences and pressures, all of which affected the care they were able to administer to the soldiers. It generated some fascinating debate, and I also received a book from a chaplain who saw service in Afghanistan and Iraq–a really special treat.

The third day of the conference examined the role of women peace crusaders. The opening paper, “‘If Christ could be militant so could I’: Helen Crawfurd and the Women’s Peace Crusade, 1916-1918,” was delivered by activist and historian Lesley Orr, previously of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The balance of the day was spent on a walk to commemorate the first Women’s Peace Crusade. In its original form, the first Women’s Peace Crusade marched from George Square to Glasgow Green, drawing crowds of thousands. This Crusade grew into a mass international women’s peace movement. Since early 2016 a group of amateur women historians have been discovering some of the remarkable women involved. 100 years later to the day a similar parade was held (albeit, with far fewer participants). It was a poignant walk on a fortunately sunny day.

The people and campus of the University of Glasgow were fantastic. I had the chance to explore the university and its chapel which was built in remembrance of the students who fought and died during the First World War. This conference reinvigorated my desire to research Canadian chaplains and their roles in the First World War.

Conference Report: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Meeting, 2015

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 1 (March 2016)

Conference Report: Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte Meeting, 2015

By Robert Ericksen

“‘Ein neues Klima’: Rezeptionsgeschichte des Zweiten Vatikanischen Konzils in Ost- und Mitteleuropa”

A conference took place on December 3-4, 2015 at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in the premises of the Bundesinstitut für Kultur und Geschichte der Deutschen im östlichen Europa. This meeting, organized and hosted by Professor Andrea Strübind and the Institut für Evangelische Theologie at Oldenburg, met in conjunction with the Editorial Board of the journal Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. The papers from this conference are expected to appear in the Fall 2016 edition of that journal.

This meeting took place in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II. The main focus, as explained in introductory comments by Professor Strübind, involved the assumption that the Second Vatican Council opened a new spirit of religious freedom within the Catholic Church as it faced the very changed circumstances of the Post-WWII world. Pushed especially by Catholics from the United States, in Strübind’s view, Vatican II created important changes within Catholicism—the mass in the vernacular, for example—and also changed the Catholic point of view toward other religions. Most famously, perhaps, Vatican II by way of Nostra Aetate dramatically modified Catholic teaching about Jews. This Council also opened to Protestants and to Eastern Orthodox churches new ways to understand and anticipate ecumenism within the Christian community.

Stanislaw Krajewski, a professor of philosophy at Warsaw University with an interest in Jewish-Christian relations and a connection to the Jewish-Christian institute at Cambridge, opened the conference with a paper on Jewish-Christian relations in Poland. One of the very few Jews growing up in postwar Poland, he noted that about ten percent of Polish Jews—some 350,000—survived the Holocaust, but that most of them, often returning from the USSR, fled the country as quickly as possible. Krajewski then gave his assessment on steps leading toward Nostra Aetate and the impact of that statement over time. Precursors, such as a Christian statement from the Seelisberg Conference in 1947, were so controversial they were not accepted by either Protestants or Catholics, and the Seelisberg statement itself could not be published at the time. Krajewski also noted John Connolly’s recent book, From Enemy to Brother, with its argument that primarily Jewish (and some Protestant) converts to Catholicism were the ones able to push in the direction of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation. This points toward a more deep-seated antisemitism among those born into Catholicism. Krajewski also suggested that the Holocaust would seem to have provided a strong push toward Nostra Aetate, but he claims that 2,500 bishops who responded with comments and advice never mentioned the Holocaust as a precipitating factor in this doctrinal change. Then, noting that Abraham Heschel called conversion “spiritual fratricide,” he argued that most Jews, even with Nostra Aetate,were suspicious of residual Christian hopes for conversion in the new Catholic stance. As for Polish reactions to Nostra Aetate, Krajewski pointed out the mono-ethnic nature of postwar Poland and suggested that most Poles were very pleased with this concentrated Roman Catholic Polish identity. Among other things it meant there were few Jewish partners for dialogue after Vatican II. In the 1970s, however, some young Poles, thinking their own culture somewhat insipid, began to look to the past and see pre-Holocaust Jewish culture as especially creative and exciting. Residual antisemitism lingered; yet now, Krajewski says, the atmosphere is very different. Since the 1990s, January 17 has been celebrated as a “Day of Judaism,” with clergy in some areas hosting inter-religious events. Jewish-Catholic dialogue takes place, though Krajewski thinks it still falls short of deep, doctrinal reconciliation, a situation he thinks true outside Poland as well. Finally, he says that antisemitism is unacceptable in today’s Poland, even though the depth of this change among the laity cannot be fully known.

Katarzyna Stoklosa gave a second paper on Poland, beginning with a description of the somewhat fraught relationship of Poland toward Vatican II. The Polish people seem to have been relatively unaware of and/or suspicious of this council. Some even considered any reconciliation with Judaism a “poisoning” of the Catholic faith. The government also was suspicious of Vatican II, fearing among other things, that any Polish priests who attended might not return. One bishop led a pilgrimage to Rome, which pushed the government into a limited cooperation. In the end, 250 Polish priests attended, rather than the higher figure of 1500 that once had been considered. Among the most important outcomes may have been the chance for Polish and German bishops to spend considerable time together and establish the basis for future contact.

Other papers included one on Switzerland by Franziska Metzger of Fribourg. She described the Swiss postwar circumstances as a time in which social questions grew in importance, both in terms of how the churches could nurture the holding on to moral values and how they could adjust to modernization. Vatican II represented a moment of change, so that by the 1970s churches in Switzerland began looking toward questions of equality, pluralism, social change and social justice, a direction that has continued since then.

Gerhard Besier, speaking about Vatican II and ecumenism, noted that Catholics had been resistant to ecumenical efforts in the late-1940s and 1950s. The World Council of Churches finally got Catholics to participate in the 1961 meeting in Delhi. He sees an ongoing difference, perhaps especially in Germany, in which Protestants see ecumenism as a willingness to live with differences, but Catholics see in ecumenism the goal of eventual unity. This has led to a certain amount of “phantom” discussion, according to Besier, and a discussion not accessible to the laity. As for the laity, Besier sees a Germany in which most people are less and less concerned with the arguments and goals of church leaders as they seek contentment in this life. One example? In Germany today the children of mixed marriages are supposed to divide by gender, with boys taking the religion of the father and girls that of the mother. In practice, according to Besier, fathers are likely not to press their “advantage,” nor are any in the family likely to attend church on a regular basis.

Mikko Ketola, speaking about the reception of Vatican II in Finland, similarly described a very broad change, in this case from the early to the late twentieth century. Starting with the recognition of the nearly universal dominance of the Lutheran church in Finland, Ketola noted a population of only 999 Catholics in 1940, a similar number to Jews. In the 1920s a Lutheran bishop had described Catholicism and Bolshevism as “the two greatest threats” to Finland. An analysis of Finnish attitudes toward Catholicism in 1959 described a “prejudice resting upon a firm foundation of ignorance.” Suspicion greeted Vatican II in the 1960s. However, the rapid modernization of Finland which began about that time, along with specific leadership on these issues, resulted by the 1980s with a Finland transformed, by then a “model of ecumenism.”

Hans Hermann Henrix reported on the impact of Nostra Aetate in three Eastern European nations: Russia, White Russia, and Ukraine. In all cases this reception was influenced by 1) the impact of Soviet policy through 1989, 2) the small number of surviving Jews after the Shoah, and 3) the small number of Catholics in relation to the dominance of Eastern Orthodoxy. Nostra Aetate was first translated into Ukrainian in 1996, into Russian in 1998, and first published in White Russia in 2009. In each case the Catholic Church is a small part of the population, as few as 600,000-800,000 among the 140 million Russians, for example. Also, the post-Shoah Jewish population is very small, although Ukrainian independence led to something of a Jewish “rebirth,” with a population today of 400,000. In all cases there have been efforts at Jewish-Christian dialogue and at developing Catholic respect for the Jewish faith in line with Nostra Aetate. These efforts are quite recent and often center around attempts to celebrate January 17 as a “Day of Judaism.” St. Petersburg, for example, has held such a festival in 2012, 2014, and 2015. A similar Ukrainian celebration took place in 2013 and 2014, although it failed to take place in 2015, due to the political crises that year. White Russia has been a place of Jewish-Christian dialogue since a large international conference in Minsk in November 2009.

Robert Ericksen moved outside the Middle and East European orbit of this conference to give a report on the North American discussion of Nostra Aetate. American bishops considered themselves natural leaders in the post-Vatican II discussion, especially because of the large number of Jews living in the United States by the 1960s, and also because of certain American ideas about respect for religious freedom. In March 1967, the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops published their “Guidelines for Catholic-Jewish Relations,” taking very seriously the radical nature of Nostra Aetate with its insistence that Catholics could no longer teach Christian supersession in God’s eyes or Christian contempt for Jews and Judaism. Ericksen showed the assertive nature of Jewish voices in the Jewish-Christian dialogue, voices of individuals such as Rabbi Irving Greenberg and Emil Fackenheim. He also described the increasingly substantive trajectory of change within the Christian-Jewish relationship to be found in the recent work of Catholic figures such as Father John Pawlikowski.

Tobias Weger completed this conference with a presentation on new church architecture in Poland and Germany and its reflection of Vatican II. One aspect involves a greater emphasis on lay participation along with a less rigorous assertion of the priest’s authority as the voice of God. This can be seen in the placement and style of furnishings in relation to the altar. Another emphasis is upon local history and aesthetic preferences, so that there is no single style to which a Catholic church must conform. In all cases, the discussion of Vatican II at this conference involved a recognition that it pointed in the direction of significant change. Furthermore, these changes continue to mark the Catholic Church and the Christian world in our day.

Conference Report: “Resistance Revisited and Re-questioned: Church and Society in Scandinavia and Europe”

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 1 (March 2015)

Conference Report: “Resistance Revisited and Re-questioned: Church and Society in Scandinavia and Europe”

By Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University

A conference hosted by the Royal Academy of Literature, History, and Antiquities met in Stockholm on September 18-19, 2014, focusing on the topic of church resistance to an unjust state. Professor Anders Jarlert of the University of Lund served as organizer and host. This conference also coincided with the annual meeting of the Board of Editors of Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, with the papers expected to appear in that journal in the fall of 2015.

A total of nine presentations looked broadly at the question of church resistance, especially against the Nazi state, and then focused more narrowly on Scandinavian responses to that regime. The first paper, presented by Gerhard Besier of Dresden, described the difficulty of assuming that Christian morality and resistance to the Nazi regime were naturally congruent. Though this idea dominated early postwar church historiography, and though it remains a default position for some even today, scholarship in recent decades has complicated that picture. While some Christians in Germany resisted the Nazi state and considered this a natural outcome of their religious faith, others attributed support for the Nazi state to their Christian beliefs. Hitler’s frequent references to “Providence,” for example, were designed to nurture such a connection. Besier advised against attempting to ascribe resistance to entire confessional groups or theological stances. Rather, one must consider individual circumstances and motivations as locate and interpret actual examples of resistance. Robert Ericksen of Tacoma, WA, stressed the importance of recognizing the widespread postwar condemnation of Nazi crimes and the nearly total loss of respect for the Nazi state as we try to assess church resistance to that state. Christians in Germany and their co-religionists abroad were eager to separate Christian values from Nazi crimes, with the result that the complex story of Christian behavior in Nazi Germany tended to get distorted. As we now ponder the reality of Church responses to the Nazi state, we recognize that resistance was hardly widespread. Ericksen also stressed the importance of acknowledging national identity and national experience in our analyses. We should not expect to find a typical “Christian” response to Hitler across national borders. It was far easier for patriotic Christians in Scandinavia, for example, to question and oppose Nazi policies than for patriotic Germans to contemplate treason against their own national government.

Katarzyna Stoklosa of Sønderborg, DK, mirrored Ericksen’s concern about the importance of national borders and national perspectives. Studying churches in Eastern Europe under communism, she has found no simple relationship between Christian faith and political resistance. For example, when Germans started to flee the GDR toward Poland, the Polish Catholic Church provided shelter and assistance. By contrast, the Reformed Church of Hungary did not, almost certainly due to its greater willingness to support the communist views of the national government. Recent events in Ukraine, according to Stoklosa, show a similar divide. The Greek Orthodox Church has shown sympathy toward the demonstrators who eventually produced the present government in Kiev. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, has tended to follow the Russian line, condemning the new government in Kiev. In none of these examples does one find a simple Christian stance in terms of values and politics. Andrea Varriale of Weimar presented the final paper within this broad focus on Christian resistance. Examining the Italian resistance during World War II, he described a postwar tendency to create an image of resistance unified in values and in class consciousness. A closer look, however, shows internal conflict within the Italian resistance and disagreements on the question of values. Varriale argued that popular culture, especially film, proved willing to acknowledge these internal conflicts more readily than professional historians.

The balance of this conference devoted itself to Christian responses to the Nazi presence in wartime Scandinavia. This too presented a varied picture. Palle Roslyng-Jensen of Copenhagen described a complicated response within Denmark, and a response that conflicts somewhat with Denmark’s positive reputation for its rescue of Jews in the fall of 1943. The complication began upon the German invasion, when the occupiers provided both the Danish government and the Danish Church a good deal of autonomy. This resulted, naturally, in a careful avoidance of harsh criticism toward German policies, for fear that the benefits of considerable normality in Danish life would be undercut by a clear critique of Nazi attitudes and policies. Beneath this official layer of Danish society, however, local pastors and laypeople grew increasingly critical of the Nazi occupation, based upon their pride in Danish attitudes and values and leading, among other things, to their defense of Danish Jews. In this case, a Danish population homogeneous in ethnicity and religion, still divided to a considerable extent on the question of cooperation with or resistance against Nazi Germans. Svante Lundgren of Lund described the case of Finland, allied with Germany for much of the war. The Lutheran Church in Finland worked to protect its flock and its prerogatives within this setting, including some resistance against the Nazi ideology. However, Lundgren described a small group of 150 Jewish refugees in Finland who failed to receive support or assistance from that church. Anders Jarlert of Lund also dealt with a nation never under direct German occupation. Swedish neutrality, however, did involve many connections with Germany that could prove complicated. Jarlert described how the Nuremberg Racial Laws of 1935 could create problems in cases of intermarriage between Swedes and Germans. The response of the Swedish Lutheran Church was marked more by bureaucratic muddling and uncertainty than by a moral defense of Swedish citizens of Jewish descent.

Roslyng-Jensen’s paper on Denmark had already identified the Norwegian example as a model to Danes of a more heroic way to respond to Nazi occupation. Torleiv Austad of Oslo then presented that story, a story much less marked by the ecclesiastical vacillation found in Denmark, Sweden and Finland. The Norwegian government, taken over by Vidkun Quisling with German backing, was of course a willing puppet of the Nazi occupation. The Norwegian Lutheran Church, however, resisted the Nazi hope that this official institution would become a counterpart to the sycophantic Quisling government. Bishop Berggrav and clergy throughout Norway risked their comfortable and safe positions by taking up resistance. This included a pastoral letter read in churches in early 1941 in support of justice and human rights. Then, in February 1942, seven bishops resigned, with 93 percent of the clergy following that example and resigning their positions on Easter that spring. Bishop Berggrav prepared the ground for these responses by taking on Romans 13 and the standard Lutheran belief in obedience to state authority. In a paper of 1941, “When the Driver is Out of His Mind: Luther on the Duty of Disobedience,” Berggrav established a theological basis for resistance. The Norwegian Lutheran Church then produced a document for Easter 1942, “The Foundation of the Church: A Confession and a Declaration,” clarifying a doctrine of the two kingdoms that could allow for resistance to state authority. This statement included these words: “As long as the above mentioned conditions exist … the church and its servants must live and act in accord with their pledge to God’s Word and their Confession and accept all the consequences that may follow from that.” That statement marked the day when Norwegian bishops and clergy resigned their positions rather than collaborate with the German occupation.

This conference concluded with a visit to the lovely Sigtuna Foundation buildings and grounds outside Stockholm, allowing those present to appreciate the setting where Dietrich Bonhoeffer met Bishop George Bell in his effort to secure British support for the German resistance as it attempted to overthrow Hitler.

February 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

February 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 2

Dear Friends,

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

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

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

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

4) Book note: Gerhard Besier Festschrift

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5) International Bonhoeffer Congress, Prague, July 2008

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

Dear Friends,

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

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

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

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

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Keith Clements
Chairman, 10th International Bonhoeffer Congress

With every best wish
John Conway