Tag Archives: John S. Conway

Review of Margaret Ford, ed., An Evangelical Family Revealed: The Bickersteth & Monier-Williams Letters & Diaries 1880-1918

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2011

Review of Margaret Ford, ed., An Evangelical Family Revealed: The Bickersteth & Monier-Williams Letters & Diaries 1880-1918 (York: Ford Publishing, 2010), ISBN 9780956721808.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Ecclesiastical biographies are no longer in fashion. Especially not of Victorian worthies, already entombed in two or three volumes, replete with piety and patriotism. So Margaret Ford has some hurdles to overcome in her retelling the story of the lives of the Bickersteth and Monier-Williams families, who were staunchly evangelical Protestants, many of whose male members were ordained clergymen, and who all believed that God had granted Great Britain the responsibility of ruling over her world-wide Empire and if possible of missionizing it.

Ford brings to this task an enormous and obvious sympathy for the lives and careers of a very large, if like-minded, cast of characters from the late Victorian upper middle class. She was fortunate to find in the Bodleian a huge treasure trove of Bickersteth papers, and assiduously tracked down an equally fascinating collection of Monier-Williams records still in private hands. From these rich sources she has produced a splendidly revealing portrait of the professional and private lives of these two intertwined families which carries conviction, just because they were so representative of their class and generation.

She focuses particularly on the careers of the Reverend Sam Bickersteth, his wife Ella, nee Monier-Williams, and their six sons, all of whom were young men caught up in the excitement and catastrophe of the Great War. The climax of her account lies in the experiences, spiritual crises and subsequent adjustments they underwent between 1914 and 1918, vividly drawn from the numerous letters and records their mother Ella compiled and pasted into a War Diary, which eventually extended to nine bulky volumes.

But first Ford gives a valuable picture of the evangelical background during the earlier nineteenth century. God-fearing, earnest, enthusiastic for service to the Church and the Empire, the Bickersteths were notable in being more broad-minded than most evangelicals, always placing strong emphasis on the sacraments in their Church of England worship, and being more tolerant in their relations with members of other Christian denominations.

Sam’s father had risen to be Bishop of Exeter, and was a redoubtable father figure with sixteen children, very dedicated to propagating the evangelical witness to Christian ethics, and as yet untroubled by the kind of doubts raised by Biblical criticism or Darwinian science. These were the qualities Sam inherited as a hard-working parish priest, with no special intellectual gifts but a strong devotion to the pastoral care of his flock. His ambition to become a bishop like his father was never realised, but for twelve years he was called to serve as Vicar of Leeds, the largest parish in that city, with a huge proto-cathedral of a church, and a staff of no fewer than fourteen curates. His wife Ella was the daughter of the Oxford Professor of Sanskrit, many of whose relatives had served with distinction in India in both the civil and military services. Ella brought to her marriage a single-minded determination to ensure her boys were brought up in the Christian faith of their forebears, which she shared without reservation. Both she and Sam hoped for his preferment and were not free from the kind of social snobbery which was extremely deferential to their superiors in the aristocracy, but cut them off from associating with anyone not considered a gentleman. Such were the values they instilled in their sons.

Though not wealthy, Sam and Ella were determined, as were many others of their class, to send their sons to the best boarding schools, which were already known as the training grounds for Britain’s leading elites. So from the age of eight, these boys were sent away from home, but expected to write to their parents every Sunday. They continued this habit throughout their undergraduate days when, one after another, the boys all went up to Oxford and took over the same rooms in its most prestigious college, Christ Church. These letters were carefully preserved, and as carefully replied to, often with advice as to how the boys should behave. Private prayer should not be neglected. The Sabbath should be strictly observed. Bible reading, and personal dedication to witnessing for the faith with a concentration on each individual’s search for spiritual perfection were constant themes, in the tradition set by previous generations. Ford is clearly conscious how desperately dated such admonitions to adult undergraduates must appear today. She is critical of such values, but at no point censorious. She sees Oxford as the final stage in the casting of the mould which would be tested in the crucible of the Great War.

By 1914 the eldest son Monier had already taken holy orders and served his first curacy. The second brother Geoffrey was studying to take up an academic career. Julian had gone out to Australia as chaplain to the Church of England Grammar School in Melbourne. Similarly Burgon had responded to the call for missionary volunteers and was serving in western Canada amongst the tough work gangs building railways in distant Alberta. But when war was declared all six sons responded with patriotic fervour. Julian and Burgon returned to England as soon as possible, and were soon posted to France. Their younger brothers Morris and Ralph were also recruited as infantry officers in the trenches. Tragically, in July 1916, Morris was killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. It took all the family’s Christian fortitude to accept his loss, or to believe his sacrifice had not been in vain. But his death only led to a greater resolve to carry on with their evangelical mission as his legacy to them all.

In 1917 Sam moved to the easier post of being a Residentiary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, where he ministered for another twenty years. Shortly after the war’s end, Julian was called to go back to Australia to become headmaster of a leading boys’ school, and Burgon returned to his beloved Canada. He eventually became a highly popular director of Hart House, the men’s student union of the University of Toronto, where he organized programmes to enhance the intellectual and artistic life of the students along the best Oxford lines. Both men eventually retired to Canterbury and looked after their mother who survived until she was nearly ninety-six, still secure in her fervent evangelical faith.

Several decades later, following in good Bickersteth footsteps, Sam’s grandson John became Bishop of Bath and Wells. In 1987 he organized, as his great grandfather had done, a family reunion in the Palace grounds, attended by a hundred and eighty-seven family members. No fewer than eighteen of these were ordained to the Church of England ministry. All of them, and presumably their descendants too, will now be most grateful to Margaret Ford for her captivating account of their family’s intimate hopes and fears in their daily lives during the late Victorian/early Edwardian period. Her portrait is lovingly based on extensive research into a not untypical vicarage household during those turbulent and troubled years of a century ago. And the picture she reveals of the joys and anxieties they encountered on their spiritual pilgrimage illustrates a tradition of evangelical witness and service which still has its appeal today.

 

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Review of Roger P. Minert, In Harm’s Way. East German Latter-day Saints in World War II

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2011

Review of Roger P. Minert, In Harm’s Way. East German Latter-day Saints in World War II  (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 2009) 545 pp. ISBN 878-0-8425-2746-0.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Roger Minert’s large-scale book is about one of the smaller religious communities, in East
Germany, in this case the Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons. But the scope of his investigation is limited to the short period of World War II, and mainly to the crucial
period of its final catastrophic ending in 1945-6. This account thus focuses on the time before the imposition of communist rule in the German Democratic Republic, but foreshadows that much-dreaded development.

Rather than investigating the relationship of the Church to the governmental authorities, Minert’s interest is limited to describing in detail the lives of individual Mormons. He concentrates on a biographical approach, seeking to identify and record the experiences and witness of as many as possible of the ordinary members of each branch of the Church, and to draw up a complete listing of all who died during this period. To this end, he began, fifty years after these dramatic events, to interview all available surviving eyewitnesses, to locate biographies or autobiographies by or about eyewitnesses, and to study all available church records. Out of some thirteen thousand German members in 1939, he obtained interviews with five hundred survivors, who in turn also supplied first-person narratives or written stories of their own lives or those of deceased relatives.

Mormons have a strong interest in genealogy. So the records held in Salt Lake City, Utah, provide the historian with much help in linking family histories together. In addition many of the East German mission records for this period survived intact. (It is however not clear from his text why his study was limited solely to the East German Mission). The East German Mormon community, divided into districts and branches (or local parishes) was almost entirely an urban and lower-class phenomenon. These congregations contained almost no professional people. Most of the men were labourers or craftsmen. Only a few possessed their own meeting places, mostly using renting rooms in office-buildings in unremarkable parts of town. But their working-class solidarity was compounded by their loyalty to their fellow Mormons. The pattern of church organization, introduced from the United States, was largely patriarchal, while spiritual authority rested in men chosen or appointed for their dedication to the Mormon beliefs.

After all American missionaries were withdrawn in August 1939, the local branches became more dependent on each other. On the other hand, the conscription of all the younger male members into the German armed forces left many branches without leadership. In many cases, it was years before these men returned from prisoner-of-war camps. In many other cases, they never came back. Minert has successfully carried out the immense task of recording the names and biographical details of all the Saints who lost their lives during the war-time period. As well, he has interspersed narrative passages or vivid and valuable reminiscences drawn from his interviews.

Naturally the main focus is on the shattering events of 1944-5, when East Germany was assailed by the relentless bombing campaigns by the American and British air forces, and then conquered and ravaged by the invading Soviet armies. Many families were expelled from their homes, or had already fled to find refuge elsewhere. The perspective is of course that of the victims, who sustained each other by their devotion to their Mormon faith. Inevitably there is considerable repetition in these accounts, which, predictably, emphasize the sufferings endured, often heroically. The large number of surviving photographs, which Minert has reproduced, add to the immediacy of the narratives.

In his conclusion, Minert touches briefly on the vexed question of Mormon attitudes towards National Socialism. A small number, possibly five per cent, joined the Nazi Party, but the vast majority remained passive though loyal citizens. Nothing in their religious heritage led them to oppose the ruling power, or to refuse to join in its aggressive wars. Any opposition would have led to personal and collective suffering. “If there is any question of guilt on the part of the Latter-day Saints for tolerating an evil government (and in my mind there is not) they certainly paid a terrible price for their lack of action” (519).

This is church history from the pew upwards, but is outstanding as an example of meticulous
record-keeping. The surviving family members must be enormously grateful to have such a
tribute from a dedicated fellow Mormon in distant U.S.A.

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Article Note: Keith Robbins, “Contextualizing the ‘New Reformation’. John A. T. Robinson and the Church of England in the early Sixties”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2011

Article Note: Keith Robbins, “Contextualizing the ‘New Reformation’. John A. T. Robinson and the Church of England in the early Sixties,” Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte 23 no. 2 (2010): 428-446.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The latest issue of our parent journal, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, has an interesting article—the only one in English—by Keith Robbins, a distinguished scholar of modern history and a former university president. He throws new light on the celebrated debate launched in Britain in the 1960s with the publication of John Robinson’s book Honest to God. Robinson, who had recently been appointed as a junior bishop in Woolwich, south London, was by training a New Testament scholar. But he took the opportunity to popularize the ideas of three contemporary German theologians, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paul Tillich. The impact of their radical views was tremendous. Honest to God became the
best-selling theological work of the century.

Robbins’ article outlines the context for the remarkable explosion of interest among church members and highlights the personal and institutional linkages behind the book. According to one commentator, its impact could be compared to the nailing of Luther’s theses to the church door in Wittenberg. The ‘New Reformation’ was hailed as a turning point. It came at a time when many thoughtful people in Britain were attempting to come to terms with the aftermath of the Second World War, the loss of empire, the threat of nuclear annihilation, the awareness of world poverty and the wholly new relationship with Europe. All these issues included a religious dimension, and Robinson’s controversial views reached out to many of those who believed that the new circumstances required new answers. Certainly Robinson desired to see reform, not only in the church’s dogmatic orthodoxies but also in its social witness and its political stance. These ideas were in fact propagated by a Cambridge coterie of younger theologians, many of whom went on to practise their convictions on the local parish level, often in south London. They were attempting to engage with contemporary culture by shedding much of the historical baggage and structures, which the Church of England had built up and maintained for centuries. A new morality which would revolutionize ethics was in fact already happening, but not necessarily in the transcendent sense of Bonhoeffer’s world without religion.

In the end, the hopes for new church structures came to nothing, as the establishment proved capable of institutional survival, even if its popular support has been much reduced. And even the desire for reformulating Christian doctrines in a non-mythological fashion has hardly gained momentum. As Robbins rightly concludes ‘A radical had been unable to deliver the change he wanted’.

 

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Journal issue: Religion, State and Society 39, no. 1 (March 2011). The Changing Nature of Military Chaplaincy

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2011

Journal issue: Religion, State and Society 39, no. 1 (March 2011). The Changing Nature of Military Chaplaincy.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

This whole issue is devoted to the topic: The Changing Nature of Military Chaplaincy. Ever since the days of Emperor Constantine, Christian clergy have been engaged with armies, usually as chaplains, providing pastoral care of the soldiers, raising morale, offering spiritual nourishment and often burying the dead. This task, however, has always presented major moral problems, when chaplains appear to be justifying violence and hatred of the enemy, in strong contrast to the Christian Gospel of love. How this dilemma has been faced over the centuries is the subject of the six articles in this issue of the above journal, each of which has a useful bibliography attached. These describe military chaplaincies in a variety of historical and geographical settings, and reflect on the tensions, challenges and benefits that the system has engendered and still continues to bring. Despite the above title, the most noteworthy aspect is actually on the continuity of the issues involved.

David Bachrachs’ article on the wars in Germany in the tenth and eleventh centuries depicts chaplains developing the same kind of spiritual support for secular warfare as prevailed until the twentieth century. Rulers of all kinds have considered the mobilization of such resources by the clergy to be a vital prerequisite for victory But as Oliver Rafferty shows in his account of Catholic chaplains in the British forces in the First World War, the clergy on both sides preached imminent victory for their armies, championed mutually incompatible claims that God was on their side, and even legitimized mass slaughter. Such steps only discredited the office of military chaplaincy, often irreparably.

The moral dilemmas faced by chaplains in Hitler’s armies in the Second World War, as Doris Bergen has shown, were even more acute. They worked hard to legitimize themselves in the eyes of their officers and men. But in so doing they also legitimized the Nazi war aims and thereby sanctioned even the more atrocious war crimes. As Bergen noted, the chaplains contributed to the “spiritual numbing” of the Third Reich. Angelika Dörfler-Dierken’s examination of the post-1945 Lutheran chaplaincies in the reconstituted West German armed forces is therefore valuable in pointing to the changes made. Today the German Protestant Church expects chaplains to be the moral conscience of the army. They no longer hold military rank, hence are not compromised in advance. Their role is to sharpen the consciences of individual soldiers and to question whether the military operations are actually conducive to peace or whether they only add to the spiral of violence. Such a prophetic ministry, promoting the church’s peace ethic, may easily cause conflict with both the military leaders and civilian politicians. How to maintain such a stance in war-like situations, such as Afghanistan, remains to be seen.

In the case of Canada, as Joanne Rennick shows, the military chaplaincy used to be a bastion of Caucasian, male, predominantly Christian conservatism. But after 1945 drastic changes took place, both in the armed forces and demographically in the wider population. The effects of secularization and immigration, as well as the deliberate inculcation of the idea of Canada as a nation of peacekeepers, altered the armed forces’ understanding of their mission, and hence of the role of chaplains. Today chaplains face increasing pluralism among their charges, deinstitutionalized beliefs and a loss of moral consensus. So too chaplains are now obliged by law to accept a wider set of values and lifestyles, which makes conventional forms of religious ministry more difficult. Yet, as elsewhere, chaplains continue to meet the basic needs of military personnel and offer their pastoral services.

Military chaplains in Afghanistan, where Canada also had its share of troops, have faced momentous challenges, as is made clear in the final article by Gutkowski and Wilkes. Chaplains have often had to act as interpreters for soldiers facing a religious “frontier” in a majority Muslim country, where language and cultural barriers, let alone opposition to the foreign military presence, make for almost insuperable hurdles. Christian military chaplains require special training in cultural sensitivity to encounter Muslim populations at the same time as carrying out their traditional roles of providing for the support and pastoral guidance of their own troops.

As these articles show, the ethical and religious challenges of today are not so very different from those of earlier years. But the today’s extra range of encounters, both geographical and ideological, have only made the chaplains’ opportunities for service more demanding as they seek to influence the hearts and minds not only of their soldiers but of the local populations as well. The danger still exists that the chaplains’ religious tasks will be instrumentalized by the military commanders for tactical or propaganda purposes. On the other hand, their good intentions may easily be misconstrued. Using the chaplains’ religious authority to persuade locals of the good intentions of international forces, as in Iraq, Vietnam, or Afghanistan, may lead to ambiguous results. But such problems are not new. We can be grateful to the editors of Religion, State and Society for providing this comprehensive look at the contemporary perceptions of the issues connected with military chaplaincies.

 

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Review of Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. A biography

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 3, September 2011

Review of Martin E. Marty, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison. A biography (Princeton University Press, 2011), 275 Pp., ISBN 978-0-691-13921-0.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Princeton University Press is to be commended for launching a new series of biographies, not of well-known authors, but of their well-known books, and also for including Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison (LPP) in the first group to appear. Equally welcome is the choice as biographer of the eminent Chicago scholar Martin Marty, who has done so much to popularize religious thought in his numerous writings.

Essentially Marty gives us a well-informed survey of LPP’s reception over the past sixty-five years. He begins by describing the exceptional, almost adventitious circumstances of how the book was born. Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943 and placed in solitary confinement in a dank and fetid-smelling cell in Tegel Prison in Berlin. For months he suffered from being cut off from his former intellectual and pastoral activities, and from his family and fiancée. But later, thanks to a friendly prison guard, he was able to smuggle out letters, especially to his closest associate Eberhard Bethge. And then, in the period from April to August 1944, he embarked on a voyage of theological exploration, with radically challenging ideas about the future of Christian witness and the role of the church. The texts of these fragmentary letters were to form the bulk of the book at its first appearance. Although his ideas were not fully developed, it is clear that Bonhoeffer hoped they would be the basis for a future book. He therefore asked for them to be securely preserved. Bethge was then serving with the German army in Italy. But he sent the letters back to his wife in Berlin with instructions to bury them in the garden, safe from the Gestapo or air-raids. Miraculously they survived. Months later they were disinterred, and the task of deciphering Bonhoeffer’s terrible handwriting began. Thanks to Bethge’s determination, the first selection came to be published in 1951. As Marty rightly comments, “had Bethge not done his storing and editing work, the only Bonhoeffer the larger world would know was the promising theologian whose career had been cut short by the war” (39).

Bethge knew that publishing LPP was a risky business. The majority of the German Protestant clergy regarded Bonhoeffer’s participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler as a criminal dereliction of both his national and professional loyalties. Protestant clergymen could neither condone nor connive at murder, especially of the head of state. Hence the refusal by the Bishop of Munich, Hans Meiser, in early 1953 to attend a commemorative service at Flossenburg concentration camp because he saw Bonhoeffer as a political not a Christian martyr. It took many years before the climate of opinion in West Germany changed towards those who had taken part in the anti-Nazi resistance movement, and only grudgingly was this act of political witness accorded fitting recognition.

By contrast, in church circles abroad, particularly amongst supporters of the ecumenical movement such as Bishop George Bell of Chichester, Bonhoeffer’s sacrifice of his life in such a cause was early on acknowledged and acclaimed. LPP provided the evidence such supporters needed. On the other hand, the question still remains an open one whether or not the reputation of LPP was enhanced by the fact that its author died a martyr’s death.

The first translation of LPP into English was published as a slim paperback by S.C.M. Press in 1953. It received immediate praise in Britain and subsequently in North America. It came at a time when many church members were questioning their traditional orthodoxies and pietistic practices. So Bonhoeffer’s controversial and provocative ideas about “a world come of age” and the need for a “religion-less Christianity” sparked great debate. His portrayal of Jesus as “the man for others” was enormously attractive to many, but to others an exaggerated and paradoxical distortion of Christian doctrine.

In the English-speaking world, the ideas expressed in LPP gained even more notice and/or notoriety through their very wide popularization in Bishop John Robinson of Woolwich’s short book, Honest to God, which appeared in 1963. Robinson sought to show that LPP brought a message promising freedom and authenticity to a Christianity liberated from its subservience to the state and ecclesiastical tradition. Robinson’s advocacy was dynamite for a questioning church and an unstable academic community. Those seekers and devotionalists who had eagerly latched on to The Cost of Discipleship, and found inspiration and spiritual sustenance, were now jolted into a new dimension. In a world come of age, Christians were called to a much more radical obedience, both politically and socially. They were summoned to abandon the individualistic, ego-centric pursuit of personal holiness but rather to share in the sufferings of God in the world.

Robinson sought to enlist the ideas of LPP to shake up the comfortable English church establishment. But in the United States, Bonhoeffer’s radicalism was extended much further. The American theologian William Hamilton took up the non-religious interpretation of Christianity, the coming of age of the world and the need to live etsi deus non daretur, and formulated his theology for the death of God. Where Robinson sought to reform, Hamilton sought to abolish. For him Bonhoeffer was significant because he had rightly focussed on the accelerating pace of secularization, the increasing unimportance and powerlessness of religion, and the end of special privilege for religious men and religious institutions.

Such iconoclasm in pursuit of Christian atheism evoked strong responses. Hamilton was accused of distorting LPP for his own ends. But, as Marty rightly comments, Bonhoeffer did write some provocative and exploratory pages and did not live long enough to clarify and develop his concepts.

In the meanwhile, and in another quarter, Bonhoeffer’s writings were being exploited for quite different purposes. In East Berlin, in what was then the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic, the theologians of the Humboldt University sought to use Bonhoeffer’s challenging radicalism as part of their campaign for the creation of a new Marxist-based social order. Hanfried Mueller, for example, took up Bonhoeffer’s idea of the world come of age to propagate his view that LPP envisaged a religion-less and class-less society. His advocacy for a kind of Christian utopian Marxism was aimed to build up support amongst the East German Protestant clergy for the new socialist regime in the G.D.R. Despite its brilliance, Mueller’s book found little credence. For most western critics, he distorted LPP for obvious political ends. And the whole attempt, of course, collapsed in 1989.

Such creative misuses of LPP were not destined to last. More recently, Marty notes, there has been an increasing interest in LPP among Catholic theologians, who find there an inspiring record of religious fidelity. Especially since the Second Vatican Council, many Catholics have found common fears and hopes expressed in LPP. In the drastically changed context of theology and faith, the old walls of separation have broken down, drawing both Catholics and Protestants to seek for a new ecumenically promoted agenda.

Most notable in Marty’s view is the increasing interest in Bonhoeffer among Evangelicals. Most of them, such as his recent biographer Eric Metaxas, had long favoured his earlier writings and had avoided or downplayed the radical questions posed in LPP. But here too, Marty believes, many Evangelicals are on the move from frozen positions or stereotypes. Others were attracted by the family values and social order implied in LPP.

Marty’s penultimate chapter covers the reception given to LPP in the wider world. “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?” is as captivating a question in Cape Town as it is in Korea. Even while Bonhoeffer’s reputation was still a chequered or at least an ambiguous one in his homeland, Germany, he was much more readily hailed as a prophet abroad. In South Africa, for example, the story of resistance against tyranny echoed loudly in the struggle against apartheid. LPP showed the biblical basis for identifying with the suffering and oppressed in any situation. So too in Latin America, the ideas of LPP could come to be seen as the “cusp of liberation theology” (199). But, in the course of time, there were also those liberationists and feminists who pounced on passages in LPP which they believed displayed Bonhoeffer’s paternalistic, elitist or even sexist opinions. Yet Marty is surely right to point out the dangers of anachronistic distortion. Some commentators have undoubtedly used the messages of LPP to further their own ends or to exploit Bonhoeffer’s ideology for their own purposes.

“Are we still of any use?” Marty’s final chapter discusses continuity and change in Bonhoeffer’s ideas. Many commentators, he notes, have seen a striking change between his early writings and his later prison letters. Some even, like Edwin Robertson, regard the latter as dangerous for believers, both doctrinally and morally. But Marty emphasises the continuity, especially in Bonhoeffer’s Christology. This, he claims is the connecting thread which links but also goes beyond the numerous paradoxes contained in LPP. At the same time, he asserts that it is these same intriguing reflections which have already guaranteed LPP a long life-cycle, and will undoubtedly continue to inspire and challenge both Christian and secular enquirers in the years ahead.

 

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Article Note: Marcus Tomalin, “Exploring Nineteenth-Century Haida Translations of the New Testament”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 3, September 2011

Article Note: Marcus Tomalin, “Exploring Nineteenth-Century Haida Translations of the New Testament,” Journal of Religious History 35 no. 1 (March 2011): 43-71.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

It is interesting to find an article about a Canadian missionary experience, written by an English scholar, and appearing in an Australian journal. Dr. Tomalin, a Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, gives us a detailed account of the translations by Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionaries sent out in the nineteenth century to the Haida Gwai, (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), a collection of islands off the coast of north-western British Columbia. Early contacts with white traders and settlers had brought diseases which rapidly reduced the Haida population. But the missionaries believed the language was still vibrant enough and that the New Testament and various Offices of the Book of Common Prayer should be translated for daily use. By the end of the century however, the Haida communities themselves wanted to learn English, so these translations have largely been forgotten. Study of the Haida language was largely left up to secular ethno-linguists. Tomalin’s detailed examination of these texts explores the difficulties and complexities involved in such trans-cultural transfers. Their authors’ efforts were clearly prodigious and thus form an integral part of the story of the Anglican Church’s establishment in western Canada.

 

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Article Note: Hedwig Richter, “Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionäre Pathos. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in Genf im Ost-West Konflikt in der 1960er und 1970er Jahren”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2011

Article Note: Hedwig Richter, “Der Protestantismus und das linksrevolutionäre Pathos. Der Ökumenische Rat der Kirchen in Genf im Ost-West Konflikt in der 1960er und 1970er Jahren,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 36 no. 3 (July-September 2010): 408-436.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Hedwig Richter, who teaches in Bielefeld, takes a highly critical, indeed sceptical, look at the World Council of Churches’ political attitudes in the 1960s and 1970s, claiming that these amounted to an attempt to give legitimacy to left-leaning utopian ideals, including even the idea of revolutionary violence.

The World Council of Churches was officially established in 1948,but had been preceded by several decades of endeavour to foster ecumenical cooperation between the Protestant churches, and to overcome the doctrinal animosities which had for so long marred their relationships. In the eyes of church leaders, these scandalous divisions had rendered in vain the churches’ witness for peace and international brotherhood in a century when the world was torn apart by war and revolution The task of creating a credible international institution to give effect to these goals was superbly carried out by the first General Secretary, Willem Visser ‘t Hooft. But its political outreach concentrated on rebuilding Europe after the catastrophes of the Second World War, which had shown the fragility of church relations, and their lack of influence on national politics.

By the end of the 1950s, however, a new era began. This was a period of rapid secularization. The churches lost support, their social relevance diminished, and their funding bases declined. In this crisis, Richter contends, the WCC’s leaders believed they could regain credibility for the Christian cause and for their institution by embracing the left-wing politics of the radical Christian fringe. Under the leadership of the third General Secretary, Philip Potter, a West Indian, the WCC promoted the slogan that the Church and the WCC shoud become “the voice of the voiceless” and that its resources should be used to advocate policies of benefit to the world’s neediest and most oppressed peoples. Such a stance included a deliberate bias against colonialism, capitalism, overseas exploitation, the arms race and other forms of military tyranny. Not surprisingly, the increasing power of the United States, and its European-based military alliance, NATO, became an easy target, despite the fact that the American Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, had been an early champion of the WCC in the 1940s.

In 1961, at the WCC’s third General Assembly in New Delhi, representatives of the Orthodox Churches, including those from the Soviet Union, joined the Council, obviously with Moscow’s agreement. The predictable result was to curtail criticism of conditions in the Soviet-controlled parts of Europe, and the suspicion, which Richter does not refute, that the WCC was used to infiltrate Soviet agents to the west. The fact is undoubted that in the 1960s the WCC’s witness was unbalanced—polemic against the West, silence towards the Communist empire. Even the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was passed over without protest. Khruschchev’s anticlerical persecution in Russia, and the Orthodox Church’s apparent complicity, though deplored, was not allowed to hinder the continued adherence of this Church in Geneva.

In the 1970s the WCC took the significant step of promoting its Programme to Combat Racism, which sought to oppose, and even overthrow, those regimes, particularly in southern Africa, which practised racial discrimination. Large sums of money were raised to support the opponents of apartheid. Enormous controversy arose when it was rumoured that these monies were being used to purchase arms for revolutionary attacks by guerrilla forces against the oppressors. The World Council was at pains to claim that its assistance was solely for humanitarian purposes, but the lack of controls and its unilateral approval of the anti-apartheid cause weakened its stance. In Richter’s view, a double standard prevailed. By adopting what she calls the “mythology” of the anti-racial campaign, the WCC sought to gain institutional legitimacy and popular endorsement from left-wing circles beyond the church doors. This policy, she believes, was a serious distortion of the WCC’s original priorities to promote mission and church unity. Theological insights were displaced by overly political considerations, as though the vocal support of left-wing policies could restore the churches’ fortunes when their proclamation of the Gospel had so obviously failed.

 

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Article Note: D. Gorman, “Ecumenical Internationalism: Willoughby Dickinson, the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2011

Article Note: D. Gorman, “Ecumenical Internationalism: Willoughby Dickinson, the League of Nations and the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches,” Journal of Contemporary History 45 no. 1 (March 2010): 51-73.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The League of Nations was the twentieth century’s most idealistic project in international politics. It failed because of the entrenched nationalism of Europe’s leaders, particularly Germany. Consequently the reputation of its supporters suffered in the history books. Amongst them was the upper-class Englishman Willoughby Dickinson (1859-1943), whose life was devoted to moral uplift and public service. His contributions have now been excellently described in this fine article by Daniel Gorman, who teaches at Waterloo University, Ontario.

Dickinson’s career began with his service on the newly-created London County Council in the 1890s, where he campaigned eagerly for progressive causes. It was a natural step-up for him to become an M.P. in the Liberal landslide of 1906. His vision was enhanced by his sincere devotion to his Anglican faith, refuting the calumny that the Church of England was ”the Conservative Party at prayer”. Likewise he was drawn to the Quaker ideal of world peace, and already before 1914 was active in promoting this cause. In 1919 he became very involved with an international body of church laymen called the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. This group sought to mobilize the churches on an ecumenical basis for the prevention of any future war. They deliberately avoided any kind of denominational or theological controversy, but instead concentrated on the world’s need for a new political order to replace the militarism and jingoism which they believed had caused the catastrophe of the Great War.

In the 1920s the World Alliance spread rapidly throughout Europe and North America. Dickinson gave much of his time and wealth in organising high-minded meetings to propagate this programme of international peace. A parallel endeavour, with the same aims of promoting peace, cooperation, disarmament and world order, led Dickinson to become a vocal supporter of the League of Nations, and of its public education activities through the League of Nations Societies established in each member state. In the 1920s Dickinson worked hard to bring about the international collaboration of these volunteer groups, and eventually became President of the International Federation of League of Nations Societies (IFLNS).

In 1930 the Labour Government gave him a peerage,but he found increasing opposition to his ideals for genuine peace and international friendship. His final years before and during the Second World War were a period of bitter disillusionment. Nevertheless his example deserves to be better known. His campaign for what he called ecumenical internationalism, designed to ameliorate world conditions through public education and leadership, combined religious motivation with political planning.

Gorman’s article is a valuable contribution by throwing light on this ardent crusader for peace and the institutions he helped to build in order to bring about this ideal at a most unpropitious period of the world’s history.

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Review Article: Christianity and Communism in East Germany

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2011

Review Article: Christianity and Communism in East Germany

Wendy R.Tyndale, Protestants in Communist East Germany. In the storm of the world (Farnham,U.K.: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), 189 Pp. ISBN 978-1409-4061-05.

Bernd Schaefer, East German State and the Catholic Church 1945-1989, translated by Jonathan Skolnik and Patricia C.Sutcliffe, Studies in German History: v. 11 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), 303 Pp. ISBN 978-1-84545-737-2.

Katharina Kunter, Erföllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume. Evangelische Kirchen in Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von Demokratie und Sozialismus (1980-1993), Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte, Reihe B: Darstellungen: Bd 46 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 346 Pp. ISBN13: 978-3-525-55745-7.

Hedwig Richter, Pietismus im Sozialismus. Die Herrnhuter Brüdergemeine in der DDR, Kritische Studien zur Geschichtswissenschaft, Bd 186 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 400 Pp. ISBN 978-3-525-37007-0.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

In the twenty years since the overthrow of the Communist empires in Eastern Europe, a remarkable number of books have been written about the fate and fortunes of the Christian churches and communities during the period of totalitarian control in this region. This is particularly the case for the churches of the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany as it is generally known, the heartland of Martin Luther’s ministry and witness. This historic legacy made East Germany the only Communist-controlled country where the majority of the population – at least nominally – was Protestant. The resulting clashes and tensions between Christianity and Communism are at the centre of these recent studies, most of which are scholarly in tone and diligently researched. They describe a highly significant chapter of modern European church history.

Several reasons can be given for this noteworthy interest inEast Germany’s church developments, which has attracted the attention of scholars not only inGermany, but also inBritain, North America andAustralia. First, the sudden collapse of the Communist regime at the end of 1989 made available an unprecedented corpus of official documentation, including the highly revealing records of the Stasi,East Germany’s secret police. In most other jurisdictions, such records are withheld in secrecy for at least a period of thirty years. But inEast Germany, they were all available. Furthermore they contained shocking – and to many people personally painful – revelations. There was an urgent need to have competent scholars assess the damage.

The second motive behind these writings was undoubtedly the wider need somehow to come to terms with the impact of the decades of Communist hegemony, a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung for the whole society. Both personally and politically, the churches, especially their leaders, now found their conduct scrutinized and criticized. They sought scholarly help to portray the series of crises and dilemmas with which they had been confronted, or the extent of political manipulation and oppression they had suffered at the hands of the Communist rulers. In the case of some, they had to explain what – in the aftermath – looked like capitulation, or a craven failure to uphold the Gospel imperative. This need for such a critical evaluation of the churches’ conduct was all the more vital because of the fact that it had all happened before, fifty years earlier. The catastrophic overthrow of the Nazi regime in 1945 had led to a full-scale review of the churches’ role under Hitler’s sway. The lessons allegedly learned were demonstrably a major influence on the churches’ policies under Communism. But now all had to be reconsidered and re-assessed.

A third reason was the clear need for scholars to chart the way forward for the churches in a post-Communist world. Having been for forty years constantly assailed with propaganda and police measures designed to cajole or enforce their submission, the churches now needed to recover their own priorities, and to rethink – once again – their whole relationship with the state, which had been so disastrously compromised during both the Nazi and the Communist eras. Inherent in all such studies has been the deeper problem of how the Christian churches – for better or for worse – have confronted the evils of twentieth century totalitarianism. The findings of these scholars have not always been comforting. There is too much evidence of both complicity and timidity. But yet, in 1989, the contribution of the churches in bringing to an end the years of tyranny and misrule cannot be doubted. The broad spectrum of responses from resistance to compromise is the subject of these books now under review.

Wendy Tyndale is an experienced British journalist with wide international contacts. Her survey of the Protestant churches in East Germany is enhanced by the lengthy and well-informed interviews she conducted with leading church members, some of whom held high office during the years of Communist rule. She begins with recapturing the dramatic events of October and November 1989 when the mass gatherings of church supporters in Leipzig, Dresden and Magdeburg at their weekly prayer meetings built up unstoppable but peaceful waves of protest which eventually brought about the collapse of the regime. She rightly claims that the initiative came from those in the churches brave enough to defy the Communist authorities. Their fears that any such public demonstrations might lead to bloodshed were well-founded. The East German police state had no compunction about taking repressive measures against dissidents. Nevertheless the church leaders did not climb down. They called on their supporters to take part in peaceful marches around the city streets, when they carried candles not guns. Their advice was heeded. No violence ensued. This unique and exemplary commitment to non-violence was sufficient. Within a month, the Communist rule was overthrown. Tyndale’s book seeks to explain to English-speaking readers how this was made possible.

After 1945 the Cold War conflicts led to the division of Germany between two irreconcilable political systems.East Germany was to become controlled by the Socialist Unity Party, led by hard-line Marxists. Their ideology called for the imposition of ‘scientific socialism’ with the eventual eradication of the churches as symbols of the feudal-bourgeois past. In addition, the churches’ widespread complicity with the former Nazi regime made them vulnerable. The conservative and nationalist attitudes of most churchmen led to virulent accusations that they were agents of western imperialism. The state-run propaganda apparatus was continuously mobilized to denounce and denigrate the churches, while atheistic scientific socialism was made the sole guiding theory of the state. The first years of Communist rule were therefore particularly challenging. In the 1950s the pattern of state repression of church activities became firmly established. Bishops and church leaders were attacked in the press, church institutions closed down, youth work curtailed or forbidden and strict limits placed on church activities. On the other hand, as with the Nazis, the Communists did not seek to prevent or purge church services. The fiercest battles came over the state’s decree that all young people had to take part in the Youth Dedication Ceremony – a socialist atheistic attempt claim total loyalty to the Party and the Communist system. The churches resisted but in the end were forced to yield when this rite became a pre-requisite for all higher education beyond elementary school. Many loyal church members fled to the more sympathetic setting of West Germany until this avenue of escape was closed by the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.

For those who remained, the ideas of the anti-Nazi theologians Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth became largely influential. Both called on Christians to exercise their witness in the places where God had called them to live, and to gain strength enough to resist the oppression and discrimination they would have to face. At the same time, Barth, in a famous letter fromSwitzerlandin 1958, counselled East German Christians against any knee-jerk anti-communism, let alone identifying Christianity with the capitalist west. In her interviews with church leaders, Tyndale gained the impression that these teachings provided a theological life-line in the embattled churches Despite all the restrictions and discrimination they endured, despite the loss of their former privileges and social status, these churchmen struggled to believe in a more positive future. Their mission was, as Bonhoeffer had suggested, to become “the church for others”, a serving church humbly accepting its exclusion from the nation’s power base. But at the same time these church leaders sought to avoid retreating into a private and pietistic religious sphere. By the 1970s they had adopted a platform calling for a reformed socialist system, liberated from the oppressive dictatorship of the Communist police state with its ever increasing surveillance carried out by the notorious Stasi. Tyndale is obviously impressed by such optimism. She is therefore careful to note that the authors of the 1989 prayer meetings and demonstrations were far more committed to reforming rather than to replacing the tyrannical Communist system. For years the churches had trodden the perilously narrow path between opposition to the state and opportunistic accommodation to it. But in 1989, amid all the tensions and excitements, they still adhered to the idea that the East German state could be changed for the better. Their aim was to secure more human freedom and dignity, more tolerance and openness of expression, but within a remade socialist state. Tyndale expresses her strong support for such ideas.

But it was not to be. Within a year after the fall of Communism, East Germany ceased to exist, and all its institutions, including the churches, were subsumed into the wider West German framework. Tyndale gives an excellent analysis of how the East German church tried to come to terms with this unfortunate legacy. To many of her interviewees, this integration and loss of their own autonomy was a regrettable step. Happiness had come, but at a high price, including the lost dreams of these church leaders. Inevitably they were hurt by the triumphalism of their new West German colleagues. In vain did they call for a period of grief and re-evaluation of the past. But the West German churches had the money. They called the tune. So the theological insights which had been the hall-marks of what was called “Church within Socialism” were abandoned. Little credit was given to the churches’ stand against the former dictatorship. Instead all too much attention was paid to those few clergy who had served the Stasi as “unofficial collaborators”. Too often, the whole attempt to find a credible Christian discipleship in a Communist world was dismissed as a delusion now relegated to the dust-bins of church history. But Tyndale seems to share the nostalgia of her now aging correspondents for this brave but bygone episode, as well as the wishful thinking about the nature of their situation which was characteristic of these high-minded churchmen. Their vision for the church’s future may have turned out to be only a dream, but the controversial issues they raised for debate, she believes, still remain as vital challenges to the church today. We can therefore be grateful to Wendy Tyndale for her sympathetic account of how these church leaders lived out the tensions between Communist ideology and Christian faith.

II

Bernd Schaefer’s account of the Catholics in East Germany was first published in German in 1998 in a somewhat longer version. It makes a valuable and complementary study to Wendy Tyndale’s. Both Catholics and Protestants suffered the same ideologically-based onslaught from their Communist rulers in the German Democratic Republic. Both were attacked as outdated survivals of a feudal era, now to be replaced by the brave new world of “Socialist Man.” Both had their institutions repressed, their communications censored, their youth work curtailed, their social outreach diminished, and were made victims of the ever watchful secret police, the Stasi. But there were also significant differences. For one thing, the Catholics were a small minority in this Protestant heartland. Ever since the unification of the country in 1871, Catholics had been disadvantaged. Bismarck’s Kulturkampf had left deep wounds. Only a few years later, Catholics were subjected to further persecution at the hands of Nazi radicals, such as Goebbels and Himmler. After 1945, they once again were called to endure fresh waves of persecution and obliged to seek new ways to defend their autonomy. It is hardly surprising that, during the forty years of Communist rule, the Catholics’ stance was a defensive one. They were largely cut off from their fellow Catholics in West Germany, and, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, virtually isolated from all outside contacts. Little was known about their institutional life, and even less published. Not until 1989 did a wealth of archival records and living witnesses become available to scholars. Schaefer in fact, served for several years in the 1990s as secretary to the East German Catholic Church’s commission investigating the nefarious activities of the Stasi and its alleged influence on Catholic life. His assessments are therefore based on his extensive research in both state and church archives.

Relations between the East German State and the churches were always one-sided. Even more than had been the case during the Nazi regime, the churches were to be faced continuously with the whole weight of the state’s repressive machinery, and rarely had an opportunity for any initiative of their own devising. Inevitably therefore accounts such as Schaefer’s have to start with a description of the Communists’ strategy and tactics as they came to launch and later to sustain their anti-church campaign. In fact, Schaefer claims, from the earliest days in 1945, the East German rulers quickly developed a two-pronged approach which became a permanent feature of the regime’s Kirchenpolitik. On the one hand, they made use of the repressive and surveillance tactics to induce obedience and compliance with their unilateral decrees. On the other hand, they also practised a policy of conciliation, attempting to lure the churches, and particularly their leaders, into affirming their loyalty to the regime or making public political declarations which could serve the regime’s search for legitimacy both at home and abroad. But the main aim remained to marginalize the churches and finally to hasten their decline.

As the Cold War intensified and the division of Germany into two rival systems became irreversible, so the Communist grip on the eastern half consolidated. The Socialist Unity Party’s hostility led to increased propaganda, administrative intervention and political attacks. From their point of view “political Catholicism” was only a facade “paving the way for German fascism.” For their part, the East German bishops attempted for as long as possible to maintain their links with their counterparts in West Germany. But the reality of Communist control forced the church leaders to come to terms with their political situation, and to abandon their wishful thinking about the prospect of German reunification. Particularly contentious was the status of the Reich Concordat of 1933. The SED regime refused to recognise its validity on the grounds that the GDR was not part of the Reich or that the treaty had been made with the Nazis. But the East German Catholic leaders refused to join with some of the West German bishops in calling for outright confrontation with the Communist regime. Discretion rather than valour became their watchword.

Subsequently the regime intensified its surveillance of the churches in search for proof of espionage. Over the years the network of informers for the Stasi infiltrated the clergy’s ranks and sought compromising information from ordinary church members. But, in Schaefer’s view, at no point were the security services, or their masters the SED, able to steer the Catholic Church to follow their dictates. Catholics in the GDR soon learnt enough about the Stasi’s operations to adopt a strong sense of caution against any intimidation. The Church as a whole retreated into a position of political abstinence, which was maintained until 1989.

After the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Catholic Archbishop, later Cardinal, Bengsch, resided in East Berlin. During his long tenure of office until 1980, the clergy were ordered to refrain from any political statements or commitments. This was his strategy for avoiding political conflicts, preserving the status quo and establishing a long-term modus vivendi with the state. It might not last for a thousand years, but clearly for the foreseeable future there was no alternative. In contrast to the Protestant churches, no Catholic was encouraged to believe that the system could be reformed. Priests were to concentrate on their pastoral duties within the parish walls.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist politicians made strenuous efforts to obtain international recognition for the GDR and support for its foreign policy. Despite the state’s implacable ideological hostility to the Vatican, its officials sought to exploit the wider church’s more favourable attitudes after the Second Vatican Council. Concessions to the East German Catholic churches could be used to gain international support. In the same way, the state’s continual need for hard currency led to a more flexible policy. The West German Catholics’ willingness to give aid to their East German counterparts could be exploited. Indeed soon millions of D-Marks flowed eastwards under these auspices. But neither the state, nor indeed the church, favoured moves towards a more pluralistic society. Both sought to preserve the inconvenient, but acceptable status quo.

By the 1980s these institutional restraints and repressive policies were increasingly repudiated by the younger generation of Catholics. They looked for more positive ways of engaging with the world. Their activity led to increased surveillance by the Stasi. Schaefer makes extensive and insightful use of the secret police records to trace their large-scale attempts to control such dissidence, but, as he shows, these officials were increasingly frustrated by their lack of effective influence. But the Catholic leaders were also hesitant. Any disruption of the status quo might well endanger the internal independence of the East German Catholic identity. The bishops were alarmed at the possible impact of the changes being demanded. They suspected that the enthusiastic initiatives of these younger members were being inspired by similarly-minded Protestant groups.

In Leipzig, Magdeburg and East Berlin, it was these groups who sponsored the prayer meetings and later protest marches which escalated in size month by month. Expectations rose accordingly. There was increasing pressure on the Catholic leaders to abandon their “hibernating stance” with its attitude of political abstinence. From the state’s point of view, such a stance was predictable and therefore acceptable. The officials in the Ministry of Church Affairs, or indeed the Stasi, therefore grew increasingly impotent and frustrated as the church members were less and less ready to be intimidated into obedient silence.

The growing self-confidence of Catholics in the GDR could be seen at the 1987 Dresden rally attended by 100,000 persons. Shortly afterwards, Catholics took part, with GDR Protestants, in an Ecumenical Convocation to debate the wide-ranging subjects of “Peace, Justice and the Integrity of Creation”, as promoted strongly by the World Council of Churches in Geneva. In addition the new Soviet initiatives for perestroika, and the reform processes in Poland and Hungary, only aroused further expectations. Pressure on the Catholic bishops to move on from their ghetto mentality grew steadily. But not until September 1989 did the Bishop of Magdeburg take an initial step to challenge the regime and call for reforms. His sensational pastoral letter was read in all churches, and marked the end of political subordination. But already power had shifted to the streets. The opening of the Berlin Wall on 9 November only confirmed the regime’s collapse. The people had spoken and succeeded. In the aftermath all the Catholic bishops could do was to claim that they had never granted legitimacy to the unlamented Communist state, and hence looked forward to its abolition and eventual reunification with West Germany.

The strength of Schaefer’s study lies in the details he provides outlining the positions of both state and church. His conclusion is that the Communist rulers were obliged to abandon their preconceived ideological prognostications about the church’s decline and disappearance. For its part, the Catholic Church found it necessary to accept its lesser place in society along with the loss of initiative and influence in political affairs. Schaefer points out that this convergence meant that no Catholics in the GDR lost their lives as a result of political persecution. The special position of the GDR saved Catholics from the full force of Stalinist repression. There was even talk in the late 1980s of an official visit by Pope John Paul II. The modus vivendi under which Catholics in the GDR operated was pragmatic, restrictive but liveable. The church’s public activities were to be sure limited by the Stasi’s surveillance and by administrative restrictions. But the Church could continue to exercise its witness within this framework. Schaefer therefore rightly states that, in this unheroic situation, Catholics were able to deal with the rigours of the monotonous socialist society. Some clergy indeed even welcomed the fact that GDR Catholics were sheltered from the permissiveness and materialism of western consumerism. But none regretted the final overthrow of the totalitarian system which they had steadfastly endured for forty years.

III

Katharina Kunter has contributed an excellent study of the churches’ reforming and socio-political initiatives of the 1980s. These were aimed at overcoming the political and strategic stalemate between the western world and the Communist bloc countries Germans on both sides of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall were particularly alarmed at the plans for nuclear rearmament which seemed to herald a further increase in international tension on their territory. The time was ripe for new initiatives, and for more hopeful alternatives. This movement adopted as its slogan: “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation”, and sought to encourage church members to increase their engagement with ethical and peace issues. Calling itself a Conciliar Process, this coterie of visionaries gained the support of such bodies as the World Council of Churches and the Conference of European Churches, and organized a series of ecumenical conferences where their ideals were discussed and strategies adopted for their wider dissemination. This alliance of peace activists, human rights defenders and environmental advocates proved highly advantageous. Their optimistic mood was enormously strengthened, as noted above, by the impact of Gorbachov’s glasnost and perestroika plans.

This vision was significantly reflected in the large gathering held in Dresden in February 1988 or the European Ecumenical Assembly held in Basel in May 1989, when for the first time Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Anglicans from all parts of Europe met in consultation about the continent’s future goals. Most notable was the presence of numerous activists, some with radical views, whose hopes and dreams were give full rein.

There can be no doubt that such rallies gave heart to the many Protestants and their churches in East Germany who played the most prominent role in the wave of protests and street demonstrations during the summer and fall of 1989. Their bravery evoked waves of sympathy around the world. Eventually they caused the regime’s downfall. Many commentators have in fact called this “the Protestant Revolution” or, because of the absence of any violence, “the velvet revolution.” This challenge to a long-established regime enormously increased the prestige of these beleaguered Protestant institutions and their leaders. They now appeared to have played a heroic part in overthrowing forty years of repression and human rights abuses. Their victory seemed to confirm the validity of the Conciliar Process and its propagation of politicized Christian ethics for a nation in crisis. Expectations were widely held that these church grass roots groups would play an important role in the renewal of society, and foster the necessary institutional changes down to the parish level. Hopes were high that the church leaders would play a significant part in a reformed non-Communist, but still socialist East Germany. And in many places pastors were looked to for such leadership.

But within a year, a very different tone was heard when revelations were made of the collaboration, or even of the complicity, between some of these churchmen and the Stasi. The secret police files contained damning evidence of too many pastors and priests giving confidential information about their parishioners, or about their institution’s internal affairs. The resulting outcry produced a severe backlash against these East German churches, and marred the whole impression of valiant resistance to tyranny.

Katharina Kunter’s study, which includes a six-page summary in English, seeks to evaluate these conflicting accounts. Like Wendy Tyndale, she too describes the “Fulfilled Hopes and Broken Dreams” of Protestants, but in both parts of the divided and later unified country. She then carries the story forward to the mid-1990s so that she can assess the contradictory waves of subsequent historiography which emerged in both East and West Germany during the difficult period of readjustment and reunification. Her analysis of these critical years shows how ambivalent many church people were – and in some cases still are – about the developments in both church and state. She has to admit that, looking at the high ambitions of many of the authors of the Conciliar Process, it must be seen as a failure. After the initial euphoria of 1989 had died down, the majority of church members became occupied with the practical details of earning a living in a broken and disrupted economy. The vision of what the church desired in terms of a renewed society died away, or remained the relatively abstract concern of a small ecclesiastical elite. Their idealistic dreams were not matched with any concrete programme for effective reforms on the spot, either nationally or locally, In the 1990s other political parties or associations sprang up to fulfill the Germans’ desire for democracy, human rights, freedom of movement and a better quality of life. Such developments, as Wendy Tyndale also noted, were a great disappointment to those church leaders who had campaigned for a new vision of Christian responsibility within a reformed socialist society.

But, in Kunter’s view, the contribution of these representatives of this utopian approach consisted in the enriched socio-political discourse within the Protestant churches. They formulated intellectual alternatives, contributing to a pluralism of views and a fruitful dialectic about ethical choices. Her final summary is very apt: “For the majority of Protestants in East Germany the hopes of liberation which they had already articulated in 1988/9 in the conciliar process, with their demands for democracy, the realization of individual human rights and the rule of law were fulfilled. However – for a minority of Protestants in the GDR and the FRG for whom the conciliar process was a way towards a democratic socialism, the end of the GDR was also the breaking of a dream” (p. 282).

IV

Tyndale’s and Kunter’s depictions of the Protestant churches covered their activities at the national level and from the perspective of the leadership. By contrast Hedwig Richter concentrates on one of the smallest church communities in East Germany, the Unity Brethren of Herrnhut, a small town in south-eastern Saxony, close to the Czech border. (In English the Herrnhuters are best known as the Moravian Brethren Church, and will be referred to as such here). In Richter’s view, although this strongly Pietistic group of parishes had at its core no more than two thousand persons, its stalwart witness and the manner in which it survived and surmounted the forty long years of Communist rule, are highly significant features and merit a full examination. Her 300-page study of how this community upheld its traditions and devotion to its Pietist heritage is an exemplary piece of church history, which fully deserves its publication in a distinguished series of historical monographs.

The Moravian Brethren church was founded by an energetic but idiosyncratic aristocrat, Count Zinzendorf in the early eighteenth century. His fervent advocacy of a religion of the heart was based on an intimate fellowship with the Saviour, and became the characteristic of his Pietist following. Their daily prayer meetings and bible-reading fellowships gave an enduring inner strength. But Zinzendorf’s main contribution was in the fields of education and mission. The schools in Herrnhut and district were to become some of the region’s best, attracting support from aristocratic families. Even more remarkable was Zinzendorf’s vision of spreading the Gospel to remote corners of the world such as Africa, Labrador, Surinam or the British American colonies. In time these Moravian missions flourished independently, but still retained their links to Herrnhut. Politically, like other Pietists, the Moravians adhered to the biblical injunction to give allegiance to due authority. When allied to the rise of German nationalism in the subsequent centuries, their patriotic sentiments led to a regrettably uncritical approach to National Socialism.

In 1945 Herrnhut was overrun and largely destroyed by the advancing Russian forces. Many of its leaders fled westwards and sought refuge among fellow Pietists in Württemberg. Leadership devolved upon members drawn from the working class, who nonetheless upheld devotedly the pietistic life-style of their forebears. The survival of the community was greatly aided by relief supplies from their American brethren, and in turn these contacts helped to restore their ideal of being a world-wide evangelizing community. Relations with the Soviet military administration ran smoothly.

After 1949, however, when the Communist control was established throughout the German Democratic Republic, matters became more critical. From the first, the regime was determined, as Tyndale showed, to bring all aspects of society, including churches, under its total control. The Moravian communities were placed under police observation, their communications censored, and they were the frequent victims of denunciations by jealous neighbours. Harassment by Communist officials became the norm, with refusal of permits for rebuilding their facilities, for their publishing activities or for visits from supporters and relatives abroad. The atmosphere of uncertainty was deliberately maintained by the Communist party at all levels. Blackmail, surveillance and occasional concessions went hand in hand.

Inevitably the Moravian traditions had to be rethought in this new setting. Overseas missions had to be handed over to other branches of the Brotherhood already abroad. The regime’s repressive restrictions curtailed much of their educational activities, which were only heightened by the mandatory requirement that all young people take part in the Communist-controlled Youth Dedication ceremony. Refusal to take part led many of the Moravian children to be excluded from all higher education schools. But the leadership sought to avoid confrontation, and hence adopted an ambivalent attitude towards their new rulers. They still retained their readiness to show a biblically-based loyalty to their political superiors. At the same time, they developed the concept of their prophetic mission to their changed society. As an example of their willingness to serve society in new ways, the Moravians took up an extensive ministry of caring for the handicapped and disadvantaged youth of the region. Such a service earned good marks from the regime, but as Richter rightly points out, had its drawbacks. Such a programme also required constant subsidies from the state, so it was also a means of enforcing the Herrnhuters’ political conformity.

In the event, by the end of the 1950s the Communist authorities also changed their tune. Since these smaller sects constituted no real political danger, they were treated more favourably than the larger churches. They could possibly be lured into giving public support to the Communists’ keen desire for international recognition. Permission to attend international conferences or to receive international visitors could be exploited for the regime’s political purposes. For example, the visit to Herrnhut by high-ranking officials of the World Council of Churches in 1981 was used in this way. Considerable publicity was given to the Council’s Program to Combat Racism on behalf of the oppressed people of Africa and Latin America, which in the Communists’ view fitted in well with their anti-western and anti-capitalist propaganda. Richter is suitably critical of the churches’ failure to apply the same criteria on behalf of the oppressed and marginalized peoples in Communist-controlled lands.

Richter’s account of these developments is drawn from her extensive and insightful use of both church and state archives. She rightly points out that due to the constant pressure to conform, these Herrnhut congregations, like so many other East Germans, became gradually accustomed to their loss of freedom, and were even ready to grant legitimacy to the injustices inflicted on them. Their isolation in the fortress beyond the insurmountable Berlin Wall, and the widespread disillusionment after the suppression of the Prague uprising in 1968, obliged a whole generation to accommodate themselves to this socialist reality, and even to express their support for its ambitious socialist goals. In Richter’s view this stance was remarkable in view of the constant repression of church activities, the attacks on religion especially by teachers and party propagandists, the relentless pressure on young people to take part in the Youth Dedication ceremony, and the marginalization the churches in general.

Not until the 1980s did the younger members begin to adopt a more critical stance. As with the larger Protestant churches, they were increasingly unwilling to accept the contradictions and injustices of the Communist regime. But the leaders in Herrnhut maintained their silent acquiescence. This was not solely the result of intimidation. Rather it stemmed from the ingrained Moravian tradition of deference to governmental authority, coupled with a somewhat naive belief in the reformability of the system, and a strong dose of Pietist traditional belief that politics were bound to be sinful and should be shunned. For this reason, some of the leaders in Herrnhut deplored the 1989 overthrow of their by now familiar oppressors. But the relief and joy of the younger generation was unbounded. After 1990 they were to play a leading role in reuniting the East German Moravians with their world-wide connections and bringing their centuries-old traditions back to a new and better life.

 

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Review of Antonia Leugers, Jesuiten in Hitlers Wehrmacht. Kriegslegitimation und Kriegserfahrung

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2011

Review of Antonia Leugers, Jesuiten in Hitlers Wehrmacht. Kriegslegitimation und Kriegserfahrung, Krieg in der Geschichte, Band 53 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöning, 2009), 233 Pp. ISBN 9783506768056.

John S. Conway,University of British Columbia

The Jesuits in Germany had a roller-coaster history in the twentieth century. Persecuted by Bismarck in the newly-created German Reich, and later expelled from the country, they were re-admitted in 1917 as a concession to German Catholics in order to uphold their war efforts. In the inter-war period, they build up some notable schools and colleges, and re-established three Provinces. But when the Nazis came to power in 1933, their fortunes suffered a sharp downturn. Nazi radicals accused the Jesuits of being the Vatican’s shock troops, threw doubt on their loyalty to the “new”Germany, attacked their institutional life, particularly their youth work, and later on confiscated many of their properties. At the same time, the younger members, like all other German males, were conscripted for military service, even including those who were already ordained as priests. During their war-time service after 1939, these Jesuits regularly and faithfully wrote to their clerical superiors, relating their war experiences, and in return received circular bulletins from their Provincial headquarters.

The almost 3000 letters from the nearly 300 Jesuits who served in military units from 1939-1945, form the basis of Antonia Leugers’ research. However, the fate of these Jesuits in Hitler’s armies was strikingly affected by a secret decree issued from Hitler’s headquarters at the end of May 1941, shortly before the invasion of the Soviet Union. This ordered all soldiers belonging to the Society of Jesus to be demobilized forthwith, and returned to civilian life. Curiously Leugers does not investigate the reasons behind this remarkable edict, since she is interested only in its impact on the Jesuits themselves. The great majority were overwhelmingly dismayed. This implacable order seemed to challenge their loyalty to the army and the nation. It might well signal the escalation of the repressive measures against the Jesuit order already launched by the Nazi Party. No explanations were ever provided to the individual soldiers, and Leugers provides none to the reader.

Although her sample is very small, and lacks any comparative examination of other series of soldiers’ letters home from the front, Leugers systematically analyses how the war affected this particular group of dedicated Catholics. In particular she is interested in how these men justified their participation in Hitler’s aggressive wars, and how they reacted to the increasingly brutalizing conditions, especially after the German war machine invaded the Soviet Union. She shows that, surprisingly, even after Hitler’s decree, many Jesuits still continued to serve in the army. Their reports on how they reacted to the devastations inflicted on the Russian people are particularly illuminating.

Essentially, Leugers shows, Jesuits were influenced both by the traditional Christian justifications for war, derived from centuries-old models, but also by the more recent development of a youth culture which advocated comradeship and adventure in a romanticized setting and applied it to Germany’s national destiny. Both sets of justification were compressed into the slogan: “All for Germany,Germany for Christ”. The evidence provided shows clearly that Jesuits were eager to demonstrate their support of this slogan by serving in the military’s ranks, all the more since conscientious objection was illegal and carried a death penalty. Their enthusiastic desire to join in with their comrades in this God-blessed struggle against godless Bolshevism, or its handmaid, Jewish skulduggery, was limited only by the refusal to take part in the less moral pastimes of the common soldiery, such as drunkenness and fornication. But political scruples were absent – or at least were never reported to their superiors. Many Jesuits shared naive views about the war’s purposes. They could believe that the invasion of Russia would lead to its liberation from the evils of Communism, and to the re-Christianization of the people. So too they shared a widespread belief that a distinction could be drawn between service forGermany’s sake and the acceptance of Nazism’s ideology and practices. Most seemed to cling to the self-induced idea of the nobility of military service and to the notion of heroic sacrifice, if necessary, of their lives for their country.

Leugers does not explore how far – if at all – these sentiments were the means of avoiding any far-reaching crises of conscience. The extracts here given provide no hints of any psychological conflicts, although this may well be due to the writers’ awareness of their letters being censored. For the most part, the Jesuits failed to recognize how far they were being made accomplices of the Nazi terroristic regime. All too readily they accepted the Nazi propaganda about the enemy, while deluding themselves that they were fighting for a “better”Germany. The fact remains that only a handful of Jesuits recognized – too late – that active resistance was required against all forms of Nazi indoctrination and terror. The rest, captivated by their religiously-flavoured nationalism, were condemned to share the moral and physical disasters which overwhelmed Germany in the final years of Hitler’s Reich.

 

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Article Note: Malgorzata Rajtar, “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eastern Germany: Reconfiguration of Identity”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 17, No. 1, March 2011

Article Note: Malgorzata Rajtar, “Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eastern
Germany: Reconfiguration of Identity,” Religion, State and Society
38 no. 4 (December 2010): 401-416.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered extensive persecution during the Third Reich. But the same stubborn refusal to bow down to the state authorities led to them being banned by the Communist rulers of East Germany in 1950, as a dissident and disloyal group, or alternatively as agents of “American monopolism”. Nevertheless the Witnesses maintained their close-knit structures, despite a further escalation of conflict over the resumption in 1962 of compulsory military service, which Jehovah’s Witnesses refuse. Most young male Witnesses suffered twenty months imprisonment. The consequent hardships for their families were however compensated for by other members, and their sense of victimization only strengthened the community. The adults refused to allow their children to join socialist youth groups, which led to further tensions. The Stasi attempted to infiltrate informers but with little success. Group solidarity was too strong.

By the 1980s, the state persecution relaxed, and after 1990 was abolished. Throughout the communist years, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had managed to maintain their numbers, but after unification, the community faced new problems in refashioning their identity. After several years of legal battles, they successfully managed to gain recognition as a public corporation in German law, but the wider issue of public acceptance still remains. The media still reflect a general disapprobation, aided by an active hostility by some of the more established church groups against the proselytizing undertaken by Jehovah’s Witnesses. They can no longer seek sympathy as the victims of political persecution, but have yet to be granted a social standing comparable to other religious groups. The search for a new identity in the new Germany for the Jehovah’s Witnesses still continues.

 

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Review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932 – 1933: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Berlin: 1932 – 1933: Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 12, ed. Larry L. Rasmussen, trans. Isabel Best, David Higgins, and Douglas W. Stott (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 680 pp. ISBN 978-0-8006-8312-2.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The twelve months from November 1932 to October 1933 covered in this, the twelfth volume of Bonhoeffer’s collected writings, were to be of crucial significance, not just for the career of this young theologian, but for his nation as well. The political and social turmoil, which had resulted in violent clashes between rival gangs of Communists and Nazis in many of Germany’s major cities, culminated in the seizure of power by the National Socialists, led by Adolf Hitler, on January 30, 1933. It was the beginning of what Bonhoeffer, within a few days, was to describe as “a terrible barbarization of our culture”, the onset of what he later called “the masquerade of evil”. This insight was eventually to lead to Bonhoeffer’s involvement in the conspiracy to overthrow Hitler’s dictatorship and to his execution for high treason in April 1945. This period is therefore notable as marking the beginnings of his opposition to the Nazis’ imposition of totalitarian measures that were to have such fateful consequences.

This volume brings together the surviving letters, articles, papers and sermons from this short turning point in Bonhoeffer’s life. As before, the translation of the German original is excellent, and the editorial footnotes very helpful. In addition we are given a chronology of these months, a very full index of names, giving the positions held by those mentioned, as well as an exhaustive subject index. This volume’s value is enhanced by having not only Larry Rasmussen’s introduction, but also the translation of the afterword provided by the German editors. In addition, certain materials have been added since the original German edition was published. On the other hand, in contrast to the preceding volume 10, which covered Bonhoeffer’s stay abroad, this volume is less revealing. During these months in Berlin, Bonhoeffer was in close contact with his friends and family, so clearly most of the significant discussions and debates about his ideas and conduct were undertaken verbally and were not committed to paper or have not survived. Nevertheless, the remarkable number of his extant communications provides us with major clues, which of course were more fully explored in Eberhard Bethge’s full biography, first published in 1966.

If this volume contains only small items not hitherto known, it is still an impressive piece of scholarship. The centrepiece of this volume is the controversy over the future of the German Evangelical Church. This dispute greatly escalated after the Nazis came to power and particularly after the passage in April 1933 of the Law ordering the removal of people of Jewish origins from official positions. On the one side, the vociferous faction known as the German Christians sought to align the church as closely as possible with the new political regime. They supported Hitler’s goals for a renewed powerful Germany, and saw in him a leader who would restore the nation’s strength by boldly and forcefully attacking those they considered to be the national enemies, particularly Communists and Jews. By such a stance, they believed, the church would regain its popularity and demonstrate its loyalty to the state. On the other side were those whose conservative rootedness deplored such innovative departures from traditional Lutheran doctrines. From the beginning, as these documents make clear, Bonhoeffer championed this adherence to orthodoxy, and became, at the age of 27, one of the most vocal critics of the German Christians and their deplorable and false doctrines. He was thus caught up, as is clear from his correspondence and papers, in the turmoil and fluidity that assailed the churches. What is remarkable is the sense of foreboding reflected in his words from the early months of Nazi rule. He refused to share the widespread enthusiasm that swept through many sections of German conservative society, including the Evangelical Church. As early as February 1933, he was expressing his view that authoritarian leadership and ecstatic patriotism were dangerously misleading traits. Most particularly he now began to take issue with the German Christians’ attempts to introduce the state’s anti-Jewish regulations into the church by banning anyone of Jewish origin from holding offices in the church, and even by calling for their expulsion altogether. This led to his being invited in June 1933 to be one of a team drawing up a firm statement of orthodox belief, known from its place of origin as the Bethel Confession. Unfortunately the church leaders delayed its publication, and asked for revisions, so that eventually Bonhoeffer felt it had been watered down and dissociated himself. It was one of the factors that led him to decide to leave Germany and take over pastoring two German parishes in London in October 1933, which is where this volume ends.

We are not yet provided with a full account of the struggles that Bonhoeffer must have gone through to reach this decision. But it clearly meant leaving the two jobs he held, first the lectureship in systematic theology at Berlin’s university, and second a chaplaincy at the Technical College. The latter appointment was clearly a mistake since few students wanted counselling, and none appeared at his office hours. By contrast his students at the university were enthralled, even though Bonhoeffer lectured at 8 in the morning on Saturdays and Wednesdays! Fortunately several students preserved their notes from which a partial text has been reconstituted, which is included in this volume. But it is notable that Bonhoeffer carefully avoided any reference to current political events. Nor were the students consulted about his sudden career change.

No less striking is the material on Bonhoeffer’s extra-curricular engagements. In these months he diligently coached a confirmation class for young lads in a north Berlin slum district, and even moved there so that they could call on him in the evenings. No less significant was his involvement with the wider European ecumenical movement, particularly through the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches. Bonhoeffer had been appointed the World Alliance’s Youth Secretary for central Europe shortly after his return from America in 1931, and was responsible for organizing youth conferences designed to overcome national barriers and hatreds. But much to the regret of his mentors in this work, Superintendent Diestel and Professor Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, Bonhoeffer was too preoccupied with his other responsibilities to give much time to the World Alliance. His most significant action was to travel to a conference in Sofia,Bulgaria, in September 1933, where he urged the World Alliance leaders to adopt a resolution deploring the German state’s measures against the Jews and protesting against the German church’s readiness to adopt the so-called “Aryan paragraph” discriminating against anyone of Jewish origin. At this point, Bonhoeffer felt that his outspokenness on this subject might well land him in a concentration camp if he returned to Germany. His decision to accept his next ministerial assignment in England was therefore a judicious move.

But the World Alliance continued to mean much to Bonhoeffer. This was the period when he was wholeheartedly persuaded of the need for world peace. In this cause he was a pupil of Siegmund-Schultze, the leading pacifist of the German Evangelical Church. But Siegmund-Schultze was to be forcibly expelled from Germany by the Gestapo in June 1933, which must have been a great shock and bitter blow to Bonhoeffer and his friends. It was not until the following year, at the World Alliance’s conference in Denmark, that Bonhoeffer’s most significant contribution to the issue of world peace was expressed. This volume, however, only hints at his developing ideas.

Karl Barth, whom Bonhoeffer greatly admired, was opposed to his leaving Germany, and the letters between the two reveal Barth’s strong regret and Bonhoeffer’s apologetic tone. But certainly we can be sure that Bonhoeffer’s steadfast denunciations of the false doctrines of the German Christians, as expressed in the Bethel Confession, were to pay a role in May 1934, when Barth composed the equally stringent rejection of false doctrines in the Barmen Declaration.

Equally notable is the text of Bonhoeffer’s often misunderstood statement on “The Church and the Jewish Question” of June 1933. This undoubtedly reflects the Lutheran theological tradition about these “outcast” people, and calls for their eventual conversion. But it also challenges the church to oppose the harsh measures taken by the state, and if necessary to bring the apparatus of the unjust and illegitimate state to a halt. He then goes on to proclaim the necessity of not allowing the state to prescribe who can be a member of the church. In reality, the church consists of Germans and Jews standing together under God’s Word. Racial characteristics have nothing to do with membership in the church. Unfortunately Bonhoeffer left this vital topic unfinished and rarely returned to it in subsequent years.

Our thanks are due to the editors and translators for their excellent work in maintaining the standard of previous volumes. It is to be hoped that the whole series will soon be completed for English-speaking readers. For as Vicki Barnett, the General Editor, rightly notes: “These volumes are a significant contribution to twentieth century theological literature, church history and the history of the Nazi era”. They afford us a detailed view of “Bonhoeffer’s historical context and its great challenges for the churches and for all people of conscience.”

 

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Review of Emmy Barth, An Embassy Besieged: The Story of a Christian Community in Nazi Germany

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Review of Emmy Barth, An Embassy Besieged: The Story of a Christian Community in Nazi Germany (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, Plough Publishing, 2010), 306 pp. ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-879-1.

 By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

The Bruderhof was the name given to a small Christian experimental community established in 1919 by Eberhard Arnold, a charismatic teacher and preacher, as a protest against the militarism and nationalism which had led to Germany’s recent defeat. He sought to recreate a community based on the ideas of the radical Reformer, Jakob Hutter, whose disciples had long since been banished from Europe and survived only in small groups in the Dakotas and western Canada. They aimed to follow Tolstoy’s lead in living a communal life without individual property, but witnessing in unity to their common piety and pacifism. In the 1920s this group settled on a dilapidated farm in a remote corner of Hessen near Fulda and began to propagate their idealistic vision as best they could. At first, this alternative life-style attracted a number of young people both from Germany and from other parts of Europe, drawn together in fervent discipleship of brotherly love according to the Sermon on the Mount. By 1933, the community had grown to over 100 persons.

The advent of the Nazi Party to power drastically altered the Bruderhof’s fortunes. Eberhard Arnold was quite clear about the incompatibility of his vision with Nazi ideology. It was not long before the local authorities began to harass the community, making use of allegations that they were a bunch of crypto-communists or even drug users. Already in November 1933, the farm was raided by armed policemen who openly declared that the Bruderhof had no place in Hitler’s Germany. The Bruderhof’s charitable status was revoked, their fostering of children at risk was suspended, and various sanctions damaged the profitability of their farming operations. In early 1934, they were forbidden to operate a separate Christian school, so that the school-age children had to be evacuated to Switzerland. In the following year, the introduction of military conscription led to the emigration of all their young men, whose pacifist beliefs prevented them from joining any military force. At first, a refuge was found on a remote hillside farm in Lichtenstein, until the authorities there bowed to Nazi pressure. Another section of the community then went to England in 1936, where they were befriended by Quakers and relocated to a farm in the Cotswolds. Unfortunately Eberhard Arnold died of a botched operation in November 1935, but even without his inspiring leadership the group managed to maintain their spiritual integrity. However, this was not enough to alter the Nazis’ resolute determination to get rid of them all. In April 1937, the police again raided the Bruderhof in force, declared its property to be confiscated, and ordered the community’s immediate disbandment. Three of the leaders were imprisoned for nearly three months, but were eventually released. The survivors emigrated from Germany to England and began to reorganize their witness once again.

This whole sad story is excellently told by Emmy Barth, one of Eberhard Arnold’s descendants, who is the community’s archivist in what is now their main centre in upper New York State. She has skillfully woven together and translated the surviving material of Arnold’s sermons, speeches and letters, and has been able to discover in Berlin the relevant documents in the records of the Reich Ministry of Church Affairs for 1936-37. While this book is entirely written from the point of view of those affected and tells us little that is new about the Nazi persecution of these minor sects, nevertheless her story is a valuable illustration of self-reliant spiritual strength refusing to capitulate in the face of ruthless and unfeeling paranoia.. Thanks to Eberhard Arnold’s prophetic vision, the Bruderhof movement continues to survive and indeed flourish. Emmy Barth’s sequel to this book, No Lasting Home: A Year in the Paraguayan Wilderness, continuing the story of their subsequent wartime flight from England to Paraguay, was reviewed in our March 2010 issue (Vol. 16, No. 1).

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Article Note: Caitlin Carenen, “The American Christian Palestine Committee, the Holocaust, and Mainstream Protestant Zionism, 1938-1948”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Article Note: Caitlin Carenen, “The American Christian Palestine Committee, the Holocaust, and Mainstream Protestant Zionism, 1938-1948,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 24 no. 2 (Fall 2010): 273-296.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Caitlin Carenen’s article describes the activities of a small but influential committee of American churchmen, the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC), established after the November 1938 pogrom in Germanyand comprised mainly of liberal Protestants. Its purpose was to mobilize support in American churches for the persecuted victims of Nazism and in particular to urge their resettlement in Palestine, along the lines advocated by Jewish and Zionist supporters. Carenen shows that this was a politically well-connected and effective lobby, motivated by the horrors of the Holocaust and sincerely dedicated to the idea of Zionism. At the time, the majority opinion among American Protestants was strongly isolationist and even pacifist, as reflected in their principal journal: The Christian Century. Events inEurope brought about a reluctant change.

One of the strong advocates forAmerica’s involvement in world events was Professor Reinhold Niebuhr ofNew York’sUnion TheologicalCollege. His ideas are well examined here. Thanks to his efforts and those of more than 300 leading political figures, support for the Zionist cause was advocated as a Christian duty, on humanitarian and pragmatic grounds, but also as an overdue response to the long history of Christian antisemitism.

This ACPC found itself allied to the much older Christian Zionism favoured largely by fundamentalists and biblical literalists, but studiously avoided any appeal to missionary ambitions, arguing instead that the return of Jews to their ancient home in Palestine would create a potentially democratic ally for American policy-makers in the Middle East. Considerable political pressure was mobilized by the ACPC against the restrictive policies of the British Mandate, which only increased after the Nazi defeat. Strong support was given to the 1945 Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry which advocated allowing 100,000 Jews to immigrate toPalestine. The British Government’s refusal to accept this policy was deplored, and subsequently the ACPC urged President Truman to throw his support behind the plans for the establishment ofIsraelas a state. His immediate recognition of this state’s existence in May 1948 can be seen as a vindication of the ACPC’s views. In subsequent histories, the contribution of these Protestants has been ignored or downplayed. This article provides a valuable corrective.

 

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Article Note: R. Gribble, “Cooperation and Conflict between Church and State: The Russian Famine of 1921-1923”

ACCH Quarterly Vol. 16, No. 4, December 2010

Article Note: R. Gribble, “Cooperation and Conflict between Church and State: The Russian Famine of 1921-1923,” Journal of Church and State 51 no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 634-662.

By John S. Conway, University of British Columbia

Richard Gribble’s article describes the unprecedented and unrepeated international and interdenominational efforts made to relieve the severe and widespread famine inRussiain 1921 to 1923. Brought about largely because of the mismanagement and misallocation of food resources by the newly-established Communist regime in theSoviet Union, this famine cost millions of lives. The enforced requisition of food grains from the peasants to feed the Red Army’s soldiers was a political decision which had catastrophic consequences. It was only when Lenin realized that not only his prestige but even the future of his regime was at stake that he accepted offers of help from outsiders. However, it was only on condition that no criticism or disruption of the Communist political control was undertaken. Complications and political difficulties abounded, but by early 1922 the American Relief Administration (ARA) under Herbert Hoover was able to bring in grain supplies to feed the starving population of millions.

Similarly, the Papal Relief Mission gathered up help from Catholic agencies in Europe and, along with the US National Catholic Welfare Council, coordinated its activities with the ARA, establishing numerous feeding centres, especially in the southernUkraineand theCrimea. Both Pope Benedict XV and his successor Pius XI saw this assistance as an opportunity to demonstrate theVatican’s commitment to compassion and charity even in a non-Catholic milieu. Pius XI donated 2 million Lire to the fund.

But none of this changed the Soviet Government’s hostility to Christianity and its clergy. Despite the Orthodox Church’s readiness to help feed the starving people, Communist repression of the church was stepped up. Leading clergy were put on trial. Church wealth was confiscated. The last significant bastions of the old regime were eliminated. The Russian famine did however demonstrate that international cooperation between church and state was possible. Even when the political and logistical circumstances were so adverse, millions of people were saved from certain starvation.

 

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