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Conference Report: Christianity and National Socialism in International Perspective

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 30, Number 4 (Winter 2024)

Conference Report: Christianity and National Socialism in International Perspective, Washington, October 2024

By Kevin P. Spicer, Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Andrew Kloes, Victoria Barnett, Kathryn Julian, and Jonathan Huener

The conference “Christianity and National Socialism in International Perspective” was co-organized by the Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte/Contemporary Church History; and the Contemporary Church History Quarterly. It was held from October 2 – 4, 2024, at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

Session 1

Kevin P. Spicer, C.S.C., Stonehill College, Moderator

Martin Menke, Rivier University: French are Catholics, Poles are Slavs: German Catholic Views of Their Neighbors, 1900-1945

Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna: The German Christian Movement in Austria and Romania, 1933-1945

Based on published and archival sources from the period, such as Abendland, Hochland, Center Party publications and Center-related newspapers, Reichstag proceedings, and government records, Martin Menke’s paper compared the development of German Catholic views of France and Germany, mainly during the interwar period. While German Catholics considered French Catholics to be brothers and sisters in faith and co-heirs to the realm of Charlemagne, they considered Poles to be Slavs first and ignored the Poles’ strong Catholicism. While this perception of the French helped to overcome postwar animosity, the pre-1914 defense of Polish rights by the Center Party evaporated during the struggles over Upper Silesia.

Dirk Schuster’s paper examined the impact of the German Christians Eisenach Institute for Research and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life on the Protestant churches in Austria and Romania. In both countries, the Protestant churches were a religious minority, and already in the 1920s, they experienced a decisive turn towards National Socialism. The national church in Romania was a stronghold of conservative elites. Younger church representatives rebelled against this situation and joined forces with the National Socialists. Due to various scandals, high church levies, and a widening gap between clergy and laity, many younger pastors and theologians took advantage of the momentum of National Socialism. They ousted the conservative elites from the church leadership. In Austria, the massive turn to National Socialism followed Austrian fascism’s rise after 1932 but did not impact the church in the same manner.

In 1939, the German Christians established the Eisenach Institute. The degree of radicalization of the national churches impacted the outreach of the Eisenach Institute. In Romania, young pastors without advanced theological training made up the majority; thus, advanced scholarly research was impossible. Instead, the clergy regularly adopted the output of the Eisenach Institute, such as a de-Judaized Bible and hymnal. The use of these texts continued even after the war ended. In many ways, the Protestant church in Romania became a testing ground for implementing such publications.

In Austria, the German Christians did not experience the same influence. We know of only six parishes in which the de-Judaized Bible was introduced after 1941. The Protestant Theological Faculty situation was completely different, as ethnonationalism permeated their teaching and scholarship. In turn, these academics eagerly embraced the “scholarship” of the Eisenach Institute and willingly collaborated with it.

 

Session 2

Lauren Faulkner Rossi, Simon Fraser University, Moderator and Respondent

Mark Ruff, St. Louis University, “Auxiliary Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler and his efforts to free convicted Nazi war criminals”

Suzanne Brown-Fleming, USHMM, “‘Love and Mercy’ after the Holocaust: The Vatican’s Postwar Clemency Campaign, 1945-1958”

Christopher Probst, Washington University in St. Louis, Continuing & Professional Studies, “Feindesliebe, ‘The Guilt of Others’, and the Jewish Question: Württemberg Protestant Clergy Coming to Terms with the Past”

These were three fine papers, each highlighting the roles of individuals in the immediate post-war era who worked within a world defined by crushing wartime defeat – the second in a generation – and all that entailed: a literally destroyed homeland; millions dead, wounded and missing; a Europe in ruins and dominated by the implacable ideologies of liberal democracy from the west and Soviet-style communism from the east. Many Germans, especially those with backgrounds like the subjects in these papers, had distrusted or feared both of these ideologies for decades. All three papers focus on individuals navigating courtrooms and judges and perpetrator-defendants, and questions about guilt and punishment and mercy. There seemed to be a shared understanding among them that the bad guys were not the Germans in the dock or in prison, but the Allies (read: the Americans), who at best were misguided and ignorant of what Germans had come through under Nazism and war, or at worst were hypocritical and vengeful.

I am struck that all three papers offer compelling evidence of continuity: the so-called “Stunde Null” of 1945 does not hold much weight in these accounts. Suzanne Brown-Fleming’s use of the recently-opened Vatican archives to investigate the involvement of Pope Pius XII and his “officers” – what she terms the “triumvirate” of Pius XII; Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI; and Domenico Tardini, later Secretary of State under John XXIII — in attempts to gain clemency for convicted war criminals provides evidence of, among other persistent traits, both latent and manifest antisemitism in the Holy See. Her findings mirror other scholars who have also gained access to these documents, notably David Kertzer in his portrayal of the wartime papacy. Mark Ruff’s presentation of Bishop Johannes Neuhäusler highlights the persistence of certain traditions in Catholic moral theology: there is no sin too big that may not be forgiven; the spiritual journeys of all Christians but evidently especially perpetrators must be encouraged and supported by God’s representatives on earth (i.e. priests). I found this resonant with my own research more than a decade ago, when priests and seminarians in the military used multiple ways of justifying their service in the Wehrmacht, but ultimately they claimed that they were all part of the same chorus: the men with whom they were serving (not so much those on the receiving end of the Wehrmacht’s attentions) had great need of them. Christopher Probst tells of Ebersbach pastor Hermann Diem’s devotion to love above all else, even of one’s enemies, and of the fierce national devotion of Theophil Wurm, chairman of the Protestant Church Council in Germany, which led him to intercede on behalf of mass murderers like Einsatzgruppe leader Martin Sandberger.

The worldview to which our protagonists adhered left little room for any other kind of victim: Jew, Romani, communist, Slav. Christopher presents what may be an anomaly in this context, in the example of Diem, who helped to hide Jews during the Shoah as part of a Württemberg “rectory chain” and whose postwar sermons emphasized accountability, responsibility, and a condemnation of evil in all its forms through a kind of ferocious love. Apart from Diem, we are treated to an array of individuals displaying stalwart German nationalism or, to clarify the motivations of the Italians in Brown-Fleming’s presentation, a “brotherly understanding”; both nationalism and understanding (what we might otherwise call sympathy) led these individuals to agitate on behalf of convicted criminals who had said reprehensible things (the antisemite Gerhard Kittel) or who had facilitated or perpetrated war crimes or crimes against humanity (the SS leaders Oswald Pohl and Otto Ohlendorf; the foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath; the navy admiral Erich von Raeder; the field marshal Wilhelm List). In their view, these were good Christian men who had either (1) made mistakes that they now repented, (2) had simply followed orders, or (3) were perhaps guilty of some charges, but of far greater concern were the alleged abuses and irregularities of the American prosecutors. Of course, the three exonerative appeals could operate conveniently in tandem.

Such evidence leads us to agree with our presenters’ conclusions that, once more, Christian moral theology in the 1940s and early 1950s consistently enabled its adherents to advocate on behalf of those co-religionists that they viewed were most in need of their support, and that it was easier to encourage an affinity/sympathy with a “sorrowful” Christian perpetrator (and the extent of the sorrow is debatable) than with the perpetrator’s victim – many of whom were dead and therefore absent anyway. There was a time when I would have cast this kind of moral theological thinking as falling short of true Christian aims. But as I’ve become immersed in this particular history, I think these papers raise the question whether we, in the 21st century, should continue to expect Christian leaders in the 1940s to have behaved otherwise, given the framework within which they had been raised and trained. Diem is the example that we wish was the standard, but instead he is the anomaly perhaps because he broke with tradition to articulate what he saw as the more pressing needs of his day, even if it went against his upbringing. I wonder if he recognized this, and felt like an outsider, even as he stood (somewhat alone) on the strength of his convictions.

 

Session 3

Andrew Kloes, USHMM, Moderator and Respondent 

Andrea Strübind, Oldenburg University: “Baptists and the Persecution of Jews and Christians of Jewish Origin under the National Socialist Dictatorship”

Sandra Langhop, “Between Obedience and Resistance: The Basel Mission in National Socialism”

The second day of the conference began with presentations by two scholars from the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg in Lower Saxony. Professor Dr. Andrea Strübind spoke on “Baptists and the Persecution of Jews and Christians of Jewish Origin under the National Socialist Dictatorship.” In her paper, Strübind analyzed “central themes in Christian anti-Semitism and racist anti-Semitism in Baptist churches, as well as their conduct towards the Jewish-Christian members and office holders in response to the measures promoted by the National Socialist regime to persecute Jews.” Strübind emphasized during her remarks that she approached this topic as a historian and as Baptist pastor in the Bund Evangelisch-Freikirchlicher Gemeinden in Deutschland. As an introductory focus, Strübind discussed the poignant case of Josef Halmos, who was a Jewish convert to Christianity and the member of a Baptist congregation in Munich. As a Sunday school teacher, Halmos was well-acquainted with the family of the pastor, Heinrich Fiehler, whose son, Karl Fiehler, served as the Lord Mayor (Oberbürgermeister) of Munich from March 1933 through May 1945. Drawing upon entries from Halmos’ diary, Strübind was able to demonstrate that the Fiehlers and other members of the congregation, of which he had long been an active member, enthusiastically embraced National Socialism and concomitantly ostracized Halmos because of his Jewish background. Strübind convincingly argued that, while Baptists numbered only about 70,000 in Germany and were thus one of the smallest churches, the history of their response to the Nazi regime after January 1933 generally mirrored those of the much larger Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches. “Some Baptists hid Jews and Jewish Christians. Many did recognize that the planned destruction of the ‘people of the Covenant’ increasingly bore the signs of diabolical rule in Germany and that this would lead to a catastrophe. A few theologians expressed this apocalyptic thought in words in their sermons and addresses. But nothing was officially mentioned nor was there any sort of petition made to the authorities.” Strübind concluded by discussing the current efforts of Baptists in Germany to memorialize those members of their congregations who were abandoned during the Holocaust, including Josef Halmos, who was murdered at Auschwitz.

Sandra Langhop, a Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin at the Institut für Evangelische Theologie und Religionspädagogik of the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, presented a paper based on her ongoing doctoral research into the Basel Mission during the National Socialist period. Citing a June 1933 article published by Karl Hartenstein, a Universität Tübingen graduate and the German director of this Swiss missionary society, Langhop was able to show persuasively that National Socialist thinking had become influential among some German-speaking Protestant missionaries. Hartenstein wrote in his society’s periodical, Der Evangelische Heidenbote: “We can never thank God enough that he once again had mercy on our Volk. After years of great despair, he gave us new hope for our Volk and our Reich. He sent us a real Führer after the times of great confusion… He pulled our Volk back from the abyss of Bolshevism at the last moment. He made our Volk united… as hardly ever before in its history. He has begun a cleansing process with us, in which everything rotten and corrupt from years ago has been broken open and can be swept out.” Langhop further analyzed how völkisch thinking variously shaped certain Basel missionaries’ approaches to their work in India, vis-à-vis British colonial government officials and indigenous peoples, and between German and Swiss missionaries.

One theme that connected both papers was their analysis of the positive reception with which many Christian churches and Christian organizations in Germany welcomed National Socialism in 1933, believing it to be a preferable to both Weimar era-democracy and communism. Secondly, both papers demonstrated how, despite the historic bonds that had long connected them to Protestants in other countries, German Baptists and German missionary supporters adopted identities that emphasized their belonging to the German people and eschewed alternative conceptions of self that were international in nature, such as belonging to the global Christian community or to the spiritual body of Christ.

Dr. Andrew Kloes is an applied researcher in the Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The views expressed here are the those of the author and do not represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

 

Session 4

Victoria Barnett, University of Virginia, Moderator and Respondent

Blake McKinney, Texas Baptist College: “The Selberg Circle and Transatlantic Propaganda”

Friedericke Henjes, Oldenburg University: “The Reception of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories on the Internet”

These two papers cover different eras and topics—but their underlying theme (the dynamics of propaganda) led to an illuminating discussion.

Blake McKinney discussed a little-known pro-German group in the United States, led by an American businessman, Emil Selberg, that pushed Nazi propaganda during the 1930s. Selberg was sympathetic to post-1918 German resentments, including the view that the Versailles Treaty had placed an impossible burden on the German people, whose resentment and anger led them to see Adolf Hitler as a leader offering new hope.

Selberg wanted to promote a positive image of the new regime in the United States. His allies were U.S. Senator Royal Copeland from New York and a prominent Methodist layman, Paul Douglass (who later became president of American University). Copeland suggested early on that Selberg might find a receptive ear for his work in American churches, including staff members at the Federal Council of Churches in New York who were focused on promoting reconciliation with Germany after the First World War.

Selberg’s main point of contact in Berlin was August Wilhelm Schreiber, an official in the Church Federation office. Both men seem to have seen this as an opportunity to advance their own careers. Having a high-ranking church contact in Berlin gave Selberg an entry point to the FCC staff. In turn, an important American church contact made Schreiber useful, both to the Deutsche Christen as they sought to create a new Reich Church and to the Nazi regime, which was already creating propaganda aimed at the U.S. McKinney’s research offers some insight into why, by the end of 1933, FCC officials like Henry Leiper were backpedaling from their early forthright condemnations of German church silence about Nazi measures to a “both-sides” approach, as they navigated the divisions within German Protestantism.

Ultimately, Selberg’s attempts were sidelined by the events of the Church Struggle itself and growing international outrage at Nazi policies. Adolf Hitler abandoned the Reich Church project in October 1934 because of the domestic and international backlash. In the United States, there was growing attention (much of it focused on Martin Niemoeller and the Confessing Church) to what people saw as the Nazi persecution of Christians. Copeland and Douglas, however, continued to defend the “new Germany” throughout the 1930s, and Douglas even published a book in 1935, God Among the Germans, which gave a sympathetic picture of Nazi Germany and the Deutsche Christen.

McKinney’s research provides an interesting new piece of the puzzle in our understanding of international Protestant reactions to the events unfolding in Nazi Germany. It is also a revealing glimpse of German and American cooperation in spreading propaganda on behalf of National Socialism, long before the rise of the internet.

The Russian antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion also reached a worldwide audience in the pre-internet era, but as Friedericke Henjes’ paper illustrated, modern social media has brought it to new audiences. The most striking aspect of her research is that the Protocols itself is no longer even necessary. Its message has been incorporated into modern conspiracy theories.

The Protocols is a case study in how conspiracy theories spread because of underlying prejudices. As Henjes noted, even in the 1930s the Protocols were recognized as a forgery—but in a conspiracy theory, the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is how the conspiracy theory is used to explain popular resentments about world events. The Protocols did this by drawing on the long history of Christian anti-Jewish tropes and their historical legacy in terms of “otherizing” Jews through various anti-Jewish legal restrictions, etc. The dog whistles have not changed since the first copy of the Protocols appeared, for example: the “wandering Jew” who infiltrates society leading to the collapse of moral standards, and the conviction that there is a secret society of “Jewish bankers” who manipulate world history.

Henjes explores how these prejudices dovetail neatly with more modern dog whistles about “globalism,” the purported influence of George Soros, etc. The core of her argument is that “the content of the ‘Protocols’ is largely disseminated on the internet via the keywords and antisemitic narratives they contain.” She offered two modern examples from two activists in the German anti-vaccine movement:  Attila Hildman and Oliver Janich. Hildman literally quotes the Protocols but links its various antisemitic tropes to recent developments like the Covid pandemic and the anti-vax movement. Janich does something similar, tying the Protocols to current issues, quoting the Gospel of John, and promoting conspiracy theories.

As Henjes notes, many modern conspiracy theories may not immediately be recognized as antisemitic—but they share a common language with the Protocols, now over a century old. Even without using the actual text of the Protocols, there are numerous slogans and images in the digital ecosystem that convey antisemitism and incite violence against Jews.

 

Session 5

Kathryn Julian, USHMM, Moderator and Respondent

Katharina Kunter, University of Helsinki: “Anne Frank in Frankfurt: Entangling the Holocaust, Local Memory and Civil Education”

Björn Krondorfer, Northern Arizona University: “The Sound of Evil: Imagining Perpetrators”

Carina Brankovic, Oldenburg University, “Conceptions of Remembrance in Leyb Rochman’s Chronicle of Survival”

In all three of these projects, there’s an interplay between intersecting memory cultures: international/ globalized memory, national/ local, civic/ confessional. Each panelist discussed how the subject changed depending on the context in which a text or memorial is being read, watched, or listened to, which indicated how memory culture can be politicized and also find interesting overlaps between various groups. For instance, Katharina discussed how the memory of Anne Frank evolved in Frankfurt in response to both international and local politics, from Adenauer’s conservative West Germany of the 1950s to a reunified Germany that emphasized humanitarianism to a more recent globalized vision of Anne Frank. There were a variety of global connections that could be made about Katharina’s project (e.g. how the memory of Sadako Sasaki has been used in the same way in Hiroshima and in global peace movements). In all three projects, there could be important interventions if discussed in a global context.

Historicization and temporality was also incredibly important in each of these talks. They showed that engagement with Holocaust memory is vastly different whether the 1950s, 1989/ 90, or in 2024. Carina, for example, showed how Leyb Rochman’s chronicle was read and reimagined in the immediate postwar period by the survivor generation as a yizkor book and memorial vs. how his writing was read by the second generation and implications for the future. In this same vein, Björn discussed how silence was used in the 2023 film Zone of Interest. He contended that this film in its omission of violent imagery was even more chilling to audiences in 2023, because what occurred during the Holocaust and at extermination camps has long been established in public memory and discourse. Each of these papers illuminated how Holocaust memory continues to be interpreted and reimagined in a variety of temporalities, civic, and religious contexts, whether in museums, local education, texts, film, or even in quotidian interactions.

 

Session 6

Jonathan Huener, University of Vermont, Moderator and Respondent

Rebecca Carter-Chand, USHMM, “The Historical Turn in Interpreting Rescue during the Holocaust: Reevaluating Religious Motivations and Religious Networks”

Kyle Jantzen, Ambrose University, “Bending Christianity to Far-Right Politics in Nazi Germany”

The final session was devoted to presentations by Dr. Rebecca Carter-Chand, Director of Programs on Ethics, Religion, and the Holocaust at the USHMM, and Dr. Kyle Jantzen, Professor of History at Ambrose University. The session was a fitting capstone to the conference, as both papers encouraged reconsideration of conventional approaches to church history in the Nazi era, even as they proposed new avenues of inquiry.

Carter-Chand’s contribution, “The Historical Turn in Interpreting Rescue during the Holocaust: Reevaluating Religious Motivations and Religious Networks,” began with a historiographical overview emphasizing that traditional analyses have tended to focus on the individual rescuer’s motives, personality, courage, and sacrifice. Carter-Chand, however, encourages a redirection in the scholarship away from rescue as a psychological phenomenon and toward rescue as a historical phenomenon, focusing more on circumstances and context in the form of “structural” and “situational” factors – factors that might include landscape, victim and rescuer networks, or the nature of occupation and coercive state power in a given setting. As an illustration, Carter-Chand concluded with a brief video interview with Holocaust survivor Zyli Zylberberg, inviting consideration of what contextual factors moved Zylberberg to make the choices she did, and how we are to evaluate her own personal agency in the complex process of rescue.

Kyle Jantzen’s presentation, “Bending Christianity to Far-Right Politics in Nazi Germany,” also offered a novel approach in our attempt to understand the place of the churches and Christianity in Nazi Germany. Reflecting on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay “After Ten Years,” Jantzen urged consideration of how the current growth of Christian nationalism and the so-called “culture wars” might help us in understanding the churches during the Third Reich. We are accustomed to drawing upon the lessons of the past to inform the present, but Jantzen suggested an inversion of sorts, that is, letting the challenges of the present inform our approach to the churches in the Nazi era, considering broadly how Christianity and its institutions adapt to politics and, more precisely, the “bending” of Christianity to the politics of the right. For Jantzen, this “bending,” both in Nazi Germany and in the present, is to be understood not in static or linear terms, but as a complex dynamic process, often improvised and experimental. Moreover, Jantzen emphasized that, in attempting to understand this process, we need to “look to the middle,” that is, between the categories of support, compliance, and defiance, and to local contexts.

 

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Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 29, Number 3/4 (Fall 2023)

Conference Report: Otto Dibelius. New Research on a Protestant Figure of the Century

By Michael Heymel, Independent Scholar and Central Archives of the Protestant Church in Hessen and Nassau (retired)

Translated from the German by Martin R. Menke

Editor’s note: the translation has hewed closely to the original German of the conference report. In a few instances some linguistic liberties were taken to ensure readability in English, but we have tried to minimize these. On occasion the original German terms are retained in square brackets to clarify a translation.

From October 5 to 7, 2022, an international conference on [Otto] Dibelius took place in Marburg. LUKAS BORMANN of the Phillips University Marburg and MANFRED GAILUS of the Technical University Berlin organized the event. The organizers selected talks by sixteen scholars active in Protestant theology and historical, cultural, and religious scholarship on Otto Dibelius (1886-1967). The conference’s purpose was to develop a new understanding of this extraordinary personality in German Protestantism for the first time since the publication of his first and, so far, only biography thirty years ago.

The conference program consisted of seven thematic sessions. The first session featured contributions to the historiography concerning Dibelius. MARTIN STUPPERICH (Hannover) reported as a witness to the creation of the Dibelius biography written by his father, Robert Stupperich. In 1967, a group around Kurt Scharf had tasked the elder Stupperich with writing a biography to honor their esteemed teacher. The publisher, however, rejected the first draft. Subsequently, the son, Martin, took on the difficult task of revising the first draft with his father. Working with his wife, the doctorally qualified historian Amrei Stupperich, Martin Stupperich claimed to have composed a significant part of the [published] manuscript. He centered the biography on the theme of the church’s independence after 1919, one of Dibelius’s most important concerns. Martin Stupperich sought to mention the persecution of the Jews because originally Robert Stupperich had not focused on accusations of antisemitism against Dibelius. When the biography appeared in 1989, Dibelius was not perceived as an antisemite.

The two following presentations were dedicated to the intellectual formation of Dibelius in late Imperial Germany. ALBRECHT BEUTEL (Münster) traced Dibelius’ development before the First World War and described him as an ambitious church reformer who oriented his thinking about parishes and parish activities on the work of Emil Sulze. Pleading for a form of preaching easily understood by the people, which Dibelius connected to a differentiated parish organizational program, he engaged the ideas of Calvin and his experience gained while studying abroad in the Church of Scotland and its small parishes. Dibelius sought to encourage parishes actively to participate in the life of the church. In his work, Dibelius considered himself a modern Lutheran and kept his distance from pietism. Dibelius embraced much of the Prussian tradition from Queen Louise to Bismarck, which to him embodied Germany. While he interpreted the outbreak of war in 1914 as a divine epiphany, his writing from the period reveals no trace of antisemitism.

WOLF-DIETRICH SCHÄUFFELE (Marburg) analyzed Dibelius’ activities during the First World War. Schäuffele concluded that his wartime sermons concerned pastoral concerns but were influenced by nationalist phraseology and far removed from the reality of the front. As a superior pastor in Lauenburg, he served soldiers’ needs. A year later, he conducted patriotic rallies in the Protestant Berlin parish of Heilsbronnen. The Christian state was his ideal, whose morality should be guaranteed by the church and Christianity. He also considered Germany’s status as a world power to be essential. Dibelius believed in a Christian German mission, and he understood the war as a just and holy war in which God, as the Lord of history, was continuing his work of creation. It seemed incredible to him that God should permit the political might of Germans to break. In 1918, Dibelius joined the DNVP.[1] At war’s end, he advocated the stab-in-the-back legend and decried the Treaty of Versailles as a satanic construct.

In the next session, which concerned itself with the church as guardian after 1919, BENEDIKT BRUNNER (Mainz) presented a talk online in which he analyzed the public and publishing activity of Dibelius in the Weimar Republic. For more than fifty years, Dibelius called for a people’s church (Volkskirche). In 1919, he considered it time for a free, strong people’s church. Dibelius claimed he was the best-informed man of the Prussian Church, who published until 1933 in seven journals. Furthermore, he supported religious instruction in public schools and called upon the people to gather around the Protestant church to resist secularization. In 1925, Dibelius became General Superintendent of the Kurmark and assumed the leadership of the Prussian church. In a much discussed and observed debate with Karl Barth, Dibelius used triumphalist language to defend the imperial church and its responsibility for the people.

TODD H. WEIR (Groningen), whose presentation had been prepared in part and translated by MAURICE BACKSCHAT (Münster), addressed the work of Dibelius at the Apologetical Center, founded in Berlin Spandau in 1921. From a Protestant perspective, the center engaged with secularization and the German atheist [Gottlosen] movement. It advocated a Christian worldview. Karl Barth considered the language of apologetics dangerous. Dibelius saw in Barth a dogmatic, disconnected from the world’s reality, who hardly understood the church’s mission. After 1945, Dibelius continued his apologetic work during the Cold War. Dibelius conceived the people’s church [Volkskirche] as a counterpoint to secular culture, which the church should engage. Dibelius recognized positive religious energies in nationalism but envisioned himself on the apologetic front against National Socialism and the German Christian movement. Until 1933, he found it increasingly difficult to delimit the boundary between his apologetics and the right-wing margins.

The fourth session analyzed Dibelius’ engagement in public debate. LUKAS BORMANN (Marburg) opened the session with a presentation about Dibelius’ most influential work, The Century of the Church, which was first published in 1926 and appeared in six further editions. Dibelius addressed his work to the educated reading middle class. Dibelius’ thesis held that the Lutheran Reformation had eliminated the church. He saw a wave of churches on a global scale and developed a Protestant cultural program that employed racial and national socialist terminology.[2] He identified freethinkers, Jews, and Catholics as demons. He argued that, while sects and the German free churches formed distinct groups, the church aimed to include everyone. At the time, Dibelius claimed that the Protestant church could co-exist with any form of government; later faced with the GDR, he relativized that position. More recent research (for example, from Wolfgang Huber, Hartmut Fritz, and Benedikt Brunner) is more critical of Dibelius’ program. He did not reach the broader masses. Instead of recognizing the church as polysemous, he polarized it and thus found himself between the fronts of a diverse Protestantism.

BRANDON BLOCK (Wisconsin) gave a virtual presentation in which he concentrated on the West German reception of Dibelius’ work Authority [Obrigkeit], published in 1959. As bishop and chairman of the Council of the Protestant Churches (EKD) in Germany, Dibelius took a traditional anti-communist position. At the same time, the Councils of Brethren sought a new role for the church. In 1958, the East German bishops professed their loyalty to the GDR. Given the situation, Dibelius wanted to make a statement about the nature of state authority. The term “authority” [Obrigkeit] (Romans 13) no longer seemed to be an adequate interpretation. Dibelius’ new work sparked a debate in which conservative Lutherans recognized an analogy between the GDR and the Third Reich. The circle around Karl Barth and the Councils of Brethren rejected Dibelius’ text. They claimed that, with his reactionary conservatism, Dibelius may have strengthened counter-reactions, which encouraged the transformation of the Protestant church into a church open to democracy and society.

JOLANDA GRÄSSEL-FARNBAUER (Marburg) addressed Dibelius’ position on women’s issues. She analyzed the work We Call Germany to God [Wir rufen Deutschland zu Gott] (1937), published by Dibelius and Martin Niemöller. She also studied critical reactions by contemporary female readers. We Call Germany responded to National Socialist church politics and criticized the German Christian movement. In the last chapter, the authors explained their view of the women’s movement. They thought women had contravened their destiny when they went to work for pay and sought education and public works. First and foremost, they were to be wives and mothers. Agnes von Zahn-Harnack contradicted this view, and  theologians Meta Eyl and Gertrud Eitner identified an affinity of the text with National Socialist ideology. Although many women were active in the Confessing Church, it remained ambivalent on the question of women’s roles. Dibelius conceded to theologically educated women a role of service in the church but not the proclamation [of the gospel] in religious worship. Until the end, he refused to ordain women.

The fifth session focused on National Socialism and the church struggle [Kirchenkampf]. According to MANFRED GAILUS (Berlin), at the opening of Parliament in Potsdam (March 21, 1933), Dibelius welcomed the National Socialist regime’s initial antisemitic policies. Using racist rhetoric, he [claimed] he had expected the “inflow of fresh blood” [“das Einströmen frischen Blutes”] as early as April 1932 and believed in a resurgence of faith. For him, the solution to the Jewish question was to prevent immigration from Eastern Europe. Dibelius’ antisemitic attitude, Gailus claimed, was amply documented. He did not encounter problems with the German Christian movement until he lost his administrative power. As an advisor to the regional Confessing Church of Brandenburg, he remained a man in the middle. He was never a Confessing Church pastor in a Confessing Church parish. Dibelius desired a large, strong, autocratically governed Germany but rejected the hierarchy of the German Christians. After 1945, a negative understanding of Dibelius developed in East Germany; in West Germany, he was seen more positively.

ANDREAS PANGRITZ (Osnabrück) studied the poorly-explored relationship of Dibelius to Jews. Pangritz considered him an antisemite with a clear conscience. After 1945, Dibelius sought to relativize his views. In an article published in 1948, in a retrospective on the Reichspogrom,[3] he did not explain why the church had remained silent. Still, he did emphasize that it was a duty of honor for the Confessing Church to help persecuted Jews. He also claimed that, after euthanasia,[4] he could no longer acknowledge the National Socialist state as an authority. He declared that he had employed two non-Aryans. Since 1934, he had employed a “half-Jew” as a secretary. Already in 1928, Dibelius confessed that he had always been an antisemite. Regarding the boycott of Jewish stores in 1933, Dibelius wrote on April 9 in the Protestant Sunday newspaper of Berlin [Evangelischen Sonntagsblatt Berlin] that the international economy and the international press were in Jewish hands. He continued that Jews abroad were rallying against Germany. He concluded that Jews were a foreign race and Eastern Jews were of questionable moral character.

TETYANA PAVLUSH (Cardiff) had been scheduled to speak on Dibelius’s attitude towards denazification. Because she canceled her talk, MICHAEL HEYMEL (Limburg) presented a talk on the relationship between Dibelius and Martin Niemöller. In a sketch of their personalities, he pointed out that there had been no conflict of authority until both occupied high leadership posts in the church. Both were Prussians, convinced monarchists, and homeless [heimatlose] national Protestants. They welcomed Hitler’s seizure of power but found themselves in ecclesiastical opposition to the German Christians. During the Kirchenkampf, they acted as allies for a time. Dibelius was initially only an observer of the Confessing Church and began his full cooperation only in June 1934. The opposition position that Niemöller assumed after the war’s end originated in the Confessing Churches’ internal fissures. This is evident in the differing evaluations of the church conference at Treysa. Niemöller considered Dibelius the bureaucratic leader of an ecclesiastical administration, while Dibelius considered Niemöller the representative of a superseded ecclesiastical minority.

The three papers of the following session were devoted to the post-war era. CLAUDIA LEPP (München) analyzed the work of Dibelius as a bishop of Berlin (1945-1966) under four aspects. First, in 1945, when he resumed his office in the Prussian Council of Brethren, Dibelius acted as a strongman, solidified old structures, and prevented a reorganization as the Council of Elders around Niemöller intended. In his work, he included both German Christian and National Socialist pastors. Second, in his sermons and pastoral letters, he assumed the position of someone who could analyze and interpret contemporary affairs, in order to frame and structure the life of the people. He also compared the Federal Republic with the Weimar Republic and the GDR with the National Socialist state. Thirdly, he acted as an anti-communist engaged in a church struggle, insisting on the rule of law and freedom of opinion in the GDR. At the time, ninety percent of the GDR’s population belonged to a Christian church. Dibelius struggled in vain against the Socialist Youth Ceremony of Jugendweihe, since most Protestants were unwilling to resist the government’s ritual. Fourth, he acted as a national Protestant activist for the reunification of Germany. By 1957, he was banned from entering the GDR but formally remained a bishop of East and West Berlin until 1966.

HANSJÖRG BUSS (Siegen) focused on the East German political and ecclesiastical opponents of Dibelius as bishop of Berlin. He was the only East German representative on the Council of the Lutheran Church of Germany and, during the 1950s, he was the face of the Protestant church. During this time, the Protestant church in the GDR lost public support. In a film produced by East German television, Dibelius was portrayed as a cold warrior based on his notorious sermon at Potsdam in 1933. This reflected the East German regime’s tendency to see him as an ideological opponent. In East German media, he was portrayed in caricatures as a NATO bishop and purveyor of the hydrogen bomb. While the East German polemic against Dibelius included antisemitic overtones, it increased his support in the West. In 1958, opposition among the pastors of Berlin-Brandenburg increased. Günter Jacob, Superintendent of the Neumark since 1946, became his primary opponent. Jacob did not insist on a unified Protestant church in Germany and, after 1960, turned against the structure of the Church of Berlin-Brandenburg, which was tailored to Dibelius and the office of the bishop.

SIEGFRIED HERMLE (München) used the annual reports written by Dibelius to analyze his tenure in office as chair of the Council of the Lutheran Church in Germany [Rat der evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland] (1949-1961). The council consisted of eleven members and was intended to lead and administer. Eleven individuals ran for the chair’s position in the 1949 elections. A clear majority voted for Dibelius and Lilje as his deputy. Niemöller was no longer capable of gaining a majority. For Dibelius, the churches in the German states represented the central points of German Protestantism. The individual churches did not want a strong central leadership. The Council of the Lutheran Church in Germany should only occasionally speak publicly in the name of the individual churches. In the eight annual reports filed by Dibelius, relations between church and state took up much space. He believed Bonn protected the church while, in the GDR, the church was increasingly exposed to propaganda. He argued that the Church should not let itself be abused in the competition of political forces. He acknowledged differences of opinion in military matters but disagreed with the Councils of Brethren. This was a contrast that influences debates concerning peace to this day. The conservative majority of the Councils of Brethren agreed with him.

The last session concerned Dibelius on the international stage. THEA SULMAVICO (Halle) characterized Dibelius’ position in the rearmament debate as ambivalent. The GDR press responded with polemics when he signed the agreement on pastoral care in the military (1957). Dibelius, in The Boundaries of the State [Die Grenzen des Staates] of 1949, criticized modern war. His criticism of the secular state was aimed only at the GDR, not against the Federal Republic. For Dibelius, the Fatherland had a higher priority than the state. It was a matter of national honor to provide for the defense of one’s own country. He warned against the great danger from the East. After atomic and hydrogen bomb tests, he believed the Soviet Union to possess superiority over the West. He accused Niemöller and Heinemann[5] of political propaganda. He claimed Lutherans were better than the followers of Barth in keeping separate political questions and questions of faith. Neither side ever entirely accepted Dibelius’ claim that he was unpolitical.

BERND KREBS (Berlin) discussed Dibelius’ relationship with Poland. In the 1920s, the primary focus was on Germans under Polish rule. Two-thirds of these Germans left Poland. General Superintendent Juliusz Barsche advocated the integration of all Protestants in the Polish state. Dibelius was convinced of a German mission in the East. Using strongly nationalist tones, he represented the interests of German Protestants in Poland. Before 1914, the region included a million Protestant Christians; after the war, only 350,000 remained. German pastors [in Poland] followed the DNVP party line and were considered leaders in ethnic German circles. In the mid-1920s, tensions worsened. National Socialist policies exerted massive pressure on the Protestant church in Posen. German Protestants in Poland were disappointed by National Socialism. Poland remained a realm of different cultures, in which the desired Germanification failed. After 1945, Dibelius concerned himself with the Lutherans in Poland.

A promised presentation on Dibelius’ active participation in the Ecumenical Movement had to be canceled because KATHARINA KUNTER (Helsinki) could not attend. HARTMUT LEHMANN (Kiel) summarized the conference and asked if anyone actually knew who Dibelius was. Did the presentations together constitute a new understanding of Dibelius? Three facets, Lehmann argued, were recognizable: 1. Dibelius was a prince of the church who always claimed leadership roles. 2. He was a man of the political right who consistently combated the left. Like the average German Protestant of his age, he supported antisemitism and initially also National Socialism. He integrated individuals from different backgrounds into the Council of the Protestant Churches of Germany. 3. After 1945, Dibelius missed the opportunity for a new orientation of the Protestant Church. One could at least imagine an alternative behavior marked by repentance and reversal. The question of what might have happened if Dibelius, as leader of the church, had acted differently before and after National Socialism would go beyond historical scholarship. LEPP and HERMLE remarked that, in such an instance, Dibelius would not have been himself and would not have risen to the church leadership positions he held.

The conference took place with relatively good participation by female scholars within a mixture of several generations of scholars and a constructive atmosphere. Nonetheless, in evaluating the work of Robert Stupperich’s discussion of antisemitism, tensions became evident. Relating to ecumenicism and denazification, gaps in the scholarship were regrettably noticed. New were the investigations of Dibelius during the Kaiserzeit[6] and his relationship to the Weimar era. On the question of antisemitism and Dibelius’ “tragic” post-war role between polemics and his slow distancing from them, the final word has not been spoken. The contributions to the conference are to be published in an edited volume.

[1] Editor’s note: German National People’s Party, a right-wing conservative nationalist party.

[2] Translator’s note: the preceding two sentences are contradictory in the original German.

[3] Editor’s note: the pogrom of November 9, 1938.

[4] Editor’s note: the Nazis’ T-4 “euthanasia” program.

[5] Editor’s note: Gustav Heinemann, at the time President of the Synod of German Churches and Minister of the Interior under Konrad Adenauer.

[6] Editor’s note: refers to the period 1871-1918.

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

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 4 (December 2016)

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

By Robert P. Ericksen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Review of Katharina Kunter and Jens Holger Schjørring, eds., Europäisches und Globales Christentum/European and Global Christianity: Herausforderungen und Transformationen im 20. Jahrhundert/Challenges and Transformations in the 20th Century

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ACCH Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2012

Review of Katharina Kunter and Jens Holger Schjørring, eds., Europäisches und Globales Christentum/European and Global Christianity: Herausforderungen und Transformationen im 20. Jahrhundert/Challenges and Transformations in the 20th Century (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 381 Pp. ISBN-13: 978-3-525-55706-8.

By Heath A. Spencer, Seattle University

What were the most important developments in twentieth-century Christianity? If the focus is on Europe, we might emphasize secularization, declining church attendance, Christian complicity in an era of war and genocide, or the challenges faced by churches under various dictatorships. If we are more global in scope, our attention might be drawn to the peculiarity of the United States in comparison to Europe, the dramatic expansion of Christianity in the global south, the global prominence of Pentecostal-charismatic varieties of Christianity, and relations between European and non-European Christianities during a transition from colonial empires to newly independent states. All of these themes are addressed in European and Global Christianity, a collection of papers presented in Denmark in 2008 at the conference “Taking Stock of Church History in the Twentieth Century from an International Perspective.” While the book does not propose a new master narrative for the history of world Christianity, individual contributors offer an indication of themes and questions that would have to be included in such a project.

In the first section, “Transformations and Historical Turning Points in the Twentieth Century,” Hartmut Lehmann and Hugh McLeod highlight broad trends in Europe and the wider world. Both see a weakening of confessional boundaries, greater religious pluralism and a dramatic decline in church attendance to be among the most important developments in European Christianity over the course of the twentieth century. McLeod identifies the 1960s as the tipping point for this ‘decline of Christendom’ but notes that the United States diverged from the European pattern in the latter part of the century. Lehmann is more attentive to trends beyond Europe and North America, drawing attention to the surge of Pentecostal-charismatic forms of Christianity and the complexity of Christian-Muslim relations. Within Europe, he also sees positive developments such as greater international understanding and a thorough discrediting of Christian anti-Judaism.

Aud V. Tønnessen and Uffe Østergård are less interested in megatrends and international comparisons than in the reactionary or progressive tendencies in Scandinavian Christianity. Tønnessen notes the persistence of an ideology of ‘gender complementarity’, not only in early twentieth-century debates about birth control and sexual morality, but also in more recent controversies over the ordination of women and the blessing of same-sex unions. Østergård’s “Lutheranism, nationalism and the universal welfare state” challenges the conventional view that trade unions and social democratic parties deserve all the credit for the modern welfare state. Instead, he concludes that “the Danish welfare state is a result of secularized Lutheranism in national garment rather than international socialism” (93).

The second section of the book offers two articles on the world wars and their repercussions for the churches. Martin Greschat shows both change and diversity in the responses of Christians to the violence of the twentieth century. During the First World War, most churches enthusiastically endorsed the slaughter. However, in the interwar period, leaders in the ecumenical movement were promoting peace and reconciliation and challenging the absolute claims of nations and states. During the Second World War, many Christians supported their governments out of a sense of fatalism and obedience to authority, but religiously-motivated resistance was also a possibility. Unlike Greschat, Nicholas Hope tells a more uniform story of Christian capitulation to the claims of ‘the State.’ Unfortunately, he does little more than raise interesting talking points (for example, the role of the churches in what James Sheehan has called the rise of the ‘civilian state’) and then drop them without further development.

The third section of the book addresses the Protestant and Catholic churches in postwar Europe. In his comparison of East German and other Eastern European churches, Miklós Tomka demonstrates that labels like ‘conformity’ and ‘resistance’ fail to do justice to the complexity of situations faced by churches and churchgoers in east bloc countries, where it was not always easy to distinguish between hypocrisy and pragmatic survival strategies. If we imagine ‘church’ to mean the clerical hierarchy and ‘resistance’ to mean openly confronting dictatorship, then these churches were seriously compromised. On the other hand, if we focus on the congregational level and pay attention to more subtle forms of opposition, then churches appear to be among the most important sites of opposition to dictatorship in the twentieth century, particularly after 1945. Tomka’s sociological analysis is complemented by Dag Thorkildsen’s historical theology in “Unconditional Christian Loyalty towards the Rulers?” Although Luther and his early modern successors left little room for challenging the social or political status quo, Norwegian theologians of the twentieth century interpreted Romans 13 (“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities…”) in such a way as to justify popular sovereignty on the one hand and resistance to German occupiers and Norwegian collaborators on the other. In the study of scriptural religions, the history of interpretation is at least as important as the texts themselves, and “Norwegian history shows that Lutheranism does not necessarily have to lead to an unconditional Christian loyalty towards the rulers” (268).

Harry Oelke and Karl-Joseph Hummel offer narrower studies of the German Protestant and Catholic churches. Oelke highlights the ongoing relevance of national studies, noting that Germany’s recent past has given a particular twist to postwar debates among German Protestants over political engagement, collective guilt, and nationalism. Hummel surveys the research on the Catholic Church in Germany, much of which has focused on the Nazi era. Immediate postwar narratives of Catholic resistance and victimhood gave way in the 1960s to critical appraisals arguing that an illiberal and anti-modern Catholic hierarchy helped facilitate the Nazi ‘seizure of power.’ More recent scholarship strikes a balance, recognizing Catholic Resistenz to national socialist ideology and its totalitarian claims as well as broad areas of complicity. Hummel also explores cases where political, moral, and theological agendas have shaped and at times distorted postwar memories and representations of German Catholicism.

The articles in the final section of the book return to some of the global trends mentioned by Lehmann in the opening article. Klaus Koschorke stresses the need for a coherent narrative of World Christianity and points to promising areas for comparative study such as church independence movements in Asia and Africa, colonial-ethical discourses, and the year 1989 as a global caesura (rather than merely European). Kevin Ward and Ezra Gebremedhim follow up by highlighting the unique dynamics of African Christianities rather than presenting them as African adaptations of a ‘European’ religion. Ward argues that in Africa, religious pluralism has long been the norm, and “religion has been the midwife of modernity rather than its opponent” (303). As a result, African Christians do not feel compelled to fight the same kinds of culture wars as have Europeans and North Americans. Ezra Gebremedhim assesses progress toward independence and equality in the relationship between the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus and the Church of Sweden. The nature of that equal partnership is revealed in the current dialogue between the two churches over the Church of Sweden’s decision to bless same-sex partnerships. The section ends with Viggo Mortensen’s reflections on the state of Christianity as a global religion in a pluralistic world. Mortensen identifies fundamentalism, relativism, and syncretism as threats to the integrity of Christianity, arguing that Christians must hold on to their convictions while engaging in dialogue with others in a spirit of konvivenz. Unfortunately, Mortensen’s call for konvivenz is compromised by his references to ‘Eurabia’ and ‘dhimmitude’ as well as the dubious claim that ‘Islam’ has no history of multicultural sympathy with the ‘other.’ One is left wondering what he means when he poses questions like, “What will win out: Protestantisation of religion or the islamisation of Christianity?” (368).

Overall, this book delivers what the title promises, a useful constellation of articles on European and global Christianity, covering key moments, themes, and trends over the course of the twentieth century. Chapters are in English or German, and the authors represent a variety of countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Hungary) and disciplines (church history, theology, and sociology of religion). The middle sections privilege European church history, but the others offer a range of global perspectives that suggest new ways to imagine and contextualize European developments. The individual articles are uneven in terms of quality, significance, and originality, but the collection as a whole gives evidence of the richness and diversity of twentieth-century Christianities, within and outside of Europe.

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Review Article: Christianity and Communism in East Germany

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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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September 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

September 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 9

 

Dear Friends,

As we start the new academic year in the northern hemisphere, it is good to know that our subject of contemporary church history continues to be of interest to so many people, even though, institutionally, it is established in the curriculum of all too few universities. But judging by the publications in this field, or by the controversies which still swirl around to challenge or intrigue us, we can surely believe that there is still much more of interest and value to come.

So I hope that you will find future issues of this Newsletter to be of help and encouragement, and will of course be delighted to have your comments on the contents if you care to send them to my home address as indicated at the end of each month’s issue.

Contents:

1) Book reviews:

a) Sheehan, Where have all the soldiers gone?
b) Lichti, Pacifist denominations in Nazi Germany
c) Coupland, Britannia, Europa and Christendom

2) Book notes:

a) Churches in Europe and Africa
b) Steinacher, Nazis auf der Flucht

3) Journal issue: Ecumenical review: The Barmen Declaration

1a) James J. Sheehan, Where have all the soldiers gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 2008. 284 Pp. ISBN-13 978-0-618-35396-5.

Historians of twentieth century Europe have rightly stressed the discontinuity between the first half of the century and the second. Before 1945, Europe was racked by wars and violence, political extremism and propaganda, ideological fanaticism, economic dislocations, mass murder and genocide, and unprecedented physical destruction and devastation. In the subsequent fifty years, the record is one of peace, political cooperation and integration, economic recovery and prosperity, and a remarkable overcoming of the multiple antagonisms which had marked Europe’s history for so long. In his valuable and perceptive study, Jim Sheehan, the distinguished American scholar from Stanford University, seeks to account for this notable change. Principally, he suggests, it is due to the obsolescence of the military establishment and its replacement by a “civilian” mentality in virtually all of Europe.

This extended essay examines the physical and also the psychological conditions which governed the conduct of both war and peace in Europe during the past century. It was, in his view, the terrible destructiveness of the second German war which convinced the European leaders to abandon their cultivation of the mentality of war, and instead to embrace and hold fast to the cause of peace. Together this metanoia has led to the creation of a dramatically new international order in Europe and a new kind of European state.

War and bloodshed had always been endemic in Europe. Every state had responded by maintaining its own army for national defence. But in the nineteenth century, the technological advances in military hardware, and the spread of new communications systems, such as railways, had brought major changes. No longer was it enough to forge armies from the ranks of the peasantry, turning these unwillingly conscripted recruits into soldiers by brutal discipline and endless drill. Modern armaments required their users to have some education, and even more significantly some incentive. By the end of the nineteenth century, each state had made massive investments in its armed forces, had altered the structures of government in order to mobilize its male populations, and had devoted an increasing proportion of its national wealth to the provision of armaments. Such steps required justification. An increasingly educated public had now to be convinced of the necessity of such sacrifices.

Before 1914, the military and political leaders had successfully organized mass publicity campaigns which stressed the individual’s patriotic duty to defend the existing political order, and to offer his services to King and Country, when the call came, without hesitation or regret.
In such a climate, only a few percipient voices, such as those of Ivan Bloch or Norman Angell, recognized that modern weaponry would make any war unprofitable, even unwinnable These opinions were however dismissed as the naive outpourings of men unable to recognise the heroism which the call to battle demanded.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, in Sheehan’s view, a relatively peaceful Europe lived in a dangerously violent world. A good deal was due to the aggressive measures taken by Europeans to extend their control over, or gain access to, resources or riches in other parts of the world. This was the violent face of globalization. Sheehan does not argue that the militarism which justified such expansion was diverted back to Europe in 1914. But he does point out that the endemic instability on Europe`s periphery, especially in the Balkans, along with the great power rivalry, was a major contributing factor. Given the almost certain demise of the Ottoman Empire, and the probable collapse of Austria-Hungary, some violent clash between the major European states seemed highly likely. But war was certainly not inevitable, nor did it have to take the form it did. Sheehan rightly points out that none of the leading figures chose they war they got. It was more the result of mistakes and miscalculations by all concerned. For many, fighting a war was the least unattractive alternative. But Sheehan also claims that belligerency for war only came after it broke out, and cannot be seen as a major causal factor.

This public enthusiasm for the war undercut hopes of organizing any opposition. Even the members of the international socialist movement, which had long denounced aggressive nationalism and promoted international cooperation, fell into disarray, and many ended up by supporting their country`s war effort. Too many young men were caught up by the prospect and glamour of military adventure. But it was to be short-lived. As the poet Peter Larkin said: `Never such innocence again`.

The actual course of the war after August 1914 demolished the reputation of the military leaders, shattered the careers of the politicians who had promoted hostilities, and destroyed the credibility of those, like the Christian clergy, who had proclaimed that God was on their side and would grant them immediate victory. The horrendous losses of so many of Europe`s youth, and the many instances of civilian deaths, even genocide, forced a change in mentalities. A biting pessimistic climate of opinion received with scepticism the more positive suggestions for a new world order, as proposed by President Woodrow Wilson, and undermined the values and institutions which had served Europe until 1914.

The consequent disillusionment, and the failure of the victor powers to enforce a viable peace settlement, can be seen as the root causes of the second European war. Sheehan rightly points to the role of Germany, but could possibly have made more of the responsibility of the German conservative elites for their refusal to accept the verdict of 1918 or to learn the lessons of their defeat. In fact, already by the early 1920s, these Germans had united their fellow countrymen in their determination to get their revenge. Their propaganda campaign was particularly successful in stirring up outrage against the so-called punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty. It attacked reparations as ruinous and unjust. It mobilized widespread fears of the dangers of a world Communist revolution. It invented the convenient myth that the German army had been stabbed in the back by treacherous civilian elements, particularly the Jews, It sabotaged attempts to rebuild German society on democratic lines, and as Sheehan notes, continued to believe in the regenerative value of violence. All these sinister developments were in place before Adolf Hitler began his meteoric rise to power. His contribution was to build effectually on these beliefs, to bring an inflexible determination to restore Germany to greatness, and to provide the political framework for Germany`s renewed aggression in 1939.

Hitler`s success, as Sheehan notes, was symptomatic of the fact that millions of European were attracted by the extremism of fascism and communism, no longer believing in a peaceful or liberal future, but persuaded that bold and radical measures were required to usher in a new political and social order. For millions of other Europeans, however, the memory of their dead weighed more heavily. The disenchantment with war and its glorification, which was amply reflected in the post-war literature and art, led to deeper political overtones. Pacifism was no longer an eccentric opinion but an unavoidable response to the logic of history. But the hopes for European peace were too shallow to offset the militancy of the extremists, which was only heightened by the financial collapse and social disorders of the 1930s. In Sheehan`s view, it was this legacy of violence left by the war which Hitler exploited in consolidating his totalitarian control over Germany and encouraged his limitless ambitions.

1939-1945 was, in Sheehan’s view, the last European war. Germany’s aggressive thrusts were overthrown, and the country was militarily occupied and subsequently politically divided. But the keystone of the post-war order was the superpowers’ sometimes perilous, occasionally precarious, and always problematic answer to the German question. For decades Germany was the source of crises usually involving the militarily vulnerable but symbolically potent city of Berlin. But the dangers of nuclear catastrophe now honed the realization that war was too disastrous to be an instrument of political statecraft. Europe’s small national armies were an irrelevance in face of intercontinental missiles. The overwhelming power of extra-European powers in a bipolar political landscape made it possible for Europeans to live at peace with one another. The goals of economic prosperity, technological progress and social modernization now superseded the appeal of military and imperial grandeur across all of Europe.

These developments enabled what Sheehan calls the rise of the civilian state. He then charts the political and institutional steps which saw the switch of government priorities from military expenditure to social programmes. At the same time the significance of Europe’s conscript armies diminished dramatically. Discipline, self-sacrifice and patriotism were no longer prized values. Organized violence, both internally or internationally, no longer enjoyed public support as a legitimate political weapon. Military symbolism, except for once or twice a year, no longer resonated. The change was made peacefully, without much protest, almost imperceptibly.

This process spread across Europe from west to east. The civilian demands for a better standard of living mobilized political opposition throughout the Soviet-controlled states, and eventually secured the overthrow of all its repressive regimes. The overthrow of the Soviet Empire led to complete collapse, but also offered the opportunity to build a more democratic civilian system of government. It was a transformation which had no historical precedent.

Since 1989 this peace process has continued unabated, despite the outbursts of awful but localized violence in the former Yugoslavia. The stages of peaceful integration have proved robust enough to flourish, and clearly Sheehan expects they will continue. His final concluding paragraph is therefore worth quoting in full:

“Since the 1950s, Europeans have enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity unparalleled in their history. Never before have so many of them lived so well and so few died because of political violence. Dreams of perpetual peace, born in the Enlightenment and sustained through some of the most destructive decades in history, seem finally to be realized. Of course there are no resting places in human affairs, nowhere to hide from the insistent pressure of change. To sustain their remarkable achievements, Europeans must face a number of economic, political, cultural and environmental challenges. Many of these challenges come from, or are influenced by, that long and ill-defined frontier that joins Europe to its neighbours,. Along this frontier, where affluence and poverty, law and violence, peace and war. continually meet and uneasily coexist, the future of Europe’s civilian states will be determined.”

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1b) James I. Lichti, Houses on the Sand?. Pacifist denominations in Nazi Germany. (Studies in modern European History, Vol. 31). New York/Bern/Oxford: Peter Lang 2008. ISBN 978-0-8204-6732-3 292 Pp.

James Lichti, who now teaches in California, and is of Mennonite extraction, has now provided us with a well-researched account of the witness of three of Germany’s smaller Protestant free churches, the Mennonites, the Seventh-day Adventists and the Quakers, during the traumatic and repressive years of National Socialism. This revised doctoral dissertation is largely drawn from a thorough examination of the political commentary contained in these societies’ periodicals, at least until most of them were suppressed during the Second World War. Essentially this is a study of the gradual accommodation made by two of these communities to the prevalent Nazi pressures, and of the compromises to their Christian faith in which they more or less willingly participated.

In actual fact, the book’s sub-title is somewhat misleading. Only the Quakers could be described as a pacifist denomination at this time. German Mennonites had already, before the First World War, largely abandoned the pacifist teachings of their founders, or the religious traditions they had shared with the long-persecuted Anabaptists. The ideal of non-resistance shifted from being a community-binding principle to an affair of the individual conscience. Nonetheless, as small minority denominations, they counted themselves as free churches and not tied to the official state-influenced or -regulated main churches, such as the German Evangelical Church or the Roman Catholics. As such, they stood for freedom of worship and of the individual conscience. They campaigned for the separation of church and state, and gave priority to their own denominational loyalties and heritage.

The Mennonite tradition combined piety and persecution, industry and isolation. In the eighteenth century, a significant number had been resettled in Russia, successfully building agricultural colonies, while fully separated from the local inhabitants both religiously and linguistically. But after the Revolution of 1917 these settlements became the target of Communist revolutionary zealotry. Violence, spoliation, persecution and expulsion spread widely. Only with the aid of the German government was a large-scale emigration possible in 1929. The shocking sufferings they endured dominated the political attitudes of the whole denomination for many years to come. Those who returned to Germany were not surprisingly imbued with a deep-seated hatred of the Bolshevism which had destroyed their lives. They were therefore easily susceptible to Nazi propaganda and its various anti-Communist overtones and mythologies, all of which came to be influential in the political commentary of their denomination’s otherwise highly pious periodicals.

At the same time, Mennonites saw it as their duty to uphold a Christian state. Too many were ready to perceive Nazism as upholding Christianity, and hence were increasingly drawn to affirming the unity of Volk and state, as Nazi propaganda proclaimed. On the other hand, they still clung to the idea that church and state should be separated, which led to what Lichti rightly calls a stunning incoherence in their discourse.

Very similar divisions occurred among the Seventh-day Adventists, who similarly sought to prove their loyalty to the new regime by declaring their support, especially for the Nazi health programmes, which ran parallel to their own opposition to narcotics, drugs and alcohol. Not surprisingly, these Adventists also admired Adolf Hitler for his personal example and championship of these same health goals. They even extended their praise to the Nazi eugenics programmes and projects. Only the Quakers maintained their own independent line by never affirming Nazi church-state policies, or supporting the ethnic nationalism displayed by so many German Protestants. German Quakers instead sought to guide the state towards conduct in line with the “inner light”, and all too often allowed their propensity to naive optimism to sway their minds. But since their numbers were so small, their influence was negligible.

Given the heightened political consciousness of the early Nazi years, all the small Protestant groups, especially those who derived from non-Germanic origins, such as the Baptists, the Mormons, the Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, were at pains to stress their national loyalty. The Mennonites had the advantage of being ur-deutsch, so had no difficulty in conforming to the ethnic concepts of the new German state. They also readily enough subscribed to the “orders of creation” theology, propagated by noted Lutheran theologians. They proclaimed the view that the distribution of humanity into higher and lower nations and races was part of God’s creative will, which it was the Christian’s duty to uphold. Such opinions easily coincided with the Nazi views on racial purity and segregation, and led to the encouragement and spread of the kind of anti-judaic and even anti-semitic vocabularies, already present in these anti-liberal Protestant ranks. The Mennonites could easily see themselves as the upholders of German culture and racial stock. So too they could portray themselves as champions of a defensive alignment against the dangerous forces of modernity, such as those derived from the Enlightenment, or associated with Jewish influences, or culminating in Bolshevism. Thus the public face of German Mennonitism consistently supported the Nazi regime, and failed to provide their constituents with any perspective transcending their culture or their era.

By contrast the German Quakers were unrepentant in maintaining their internationalist and humanitarian ideals, despite the restrictions imposed on their activities and the harassment they suffered for their cause.

Lichti’s chapter on the policies pursued by these three communities towards the Nazis’ virulent anti-semitic campaigns is important and illuminating. Mennonites and Adventists both had a long history of anti-judaic indoctrination, so were highly susceptible to the kind of pressures brought by the Nazis. Even though horrified by such outbursts of brutality as the November 1938 pogrom, the Kristallnacht, they lacked any prophylactic theology, and like the other major churches were silent in face of these injustices. Only the Quakers sought to provide immediate assistance to the victims, or to help with their plans to emigrate. Too often, however, Mennonites and Adventists shared the age-old view that Jews stood under a divine and on-going curse for their failure to accept Jesus as Christ. Mennonite discourses on the fate of the Jews were therefore well positioned to accommodate Nazi propaganda. Already in 1933, one editor of a pious Mennonite magazine had warned his readers that” all calamity comes from the Jews”. He was to remain editor for more than thirty years from 1925 t0 1956, and even afterwards showed no sign of remorse or regret for such a stance.

In Lichti’s view, given the expression of such widely-held opinions, it would be too tidy to characterize these free churchmen as merely bystanders to the subsequent genocide. At worst they were unwilling actors but nonetheless accessories to these crimes. Their deep-seated anti-judaic prejudices and projections have to be seen as providing a legitimating source of reassurance and even motivation for Germans directly engaged in the Final Solution.

In summary, Lichti argues that, given the unremitting hostility and the draconian measures imposed by the Nazi regime, the churches in Nazi Germany can be seen as having done all that could be expected of them. On the other hand, they failed to witness more courageously to the transcendent beliefs of their Christian faith, but rather retreated into policies of self-preservation. Lichti therefore concurs with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s verdict that such a retreat rendered them “incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world”. This was to be their tragedy in the awful and turbulent years of Nazi tyranny.

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2c) Philip M.Coupland, Britannia, Europa and Christendom. British Christians and European Integration. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2006. 284 pp ISBN 987-1403-39128

(This review first appeared in European History Quarterly, April 2009, and is here reprinted by kind permission of the author.).

The growth of interest in the role of religion in international politics has since 9/11 been huge. Media focus on “Islam”, in practice meaning the radicalized element associated with the Al Qaida network, has increased exponentially as politicians and diplomats have struggled to devise effective foreign, defence and security policies to deal with the threat posed by this enemy, which is at the same time everywhere but apparently nowhere. From the academic world, Samuel Huntingdon’s badly flawed ‘Clash of Civilizations’ thesis has been dredged up both to support and explain contemporary conflicts, with religions identified as a key source of global tensions.

The danger with these highly ‘presentist’ security discourses is that they ignore the part religion has always played, positively or negatively, in the political life of states the world over, in times of war and peace. From Kosovo to 9/11, Afghanistan to Iraq, religion only seems to get noticed when it is factored in to explain inter-state or intra-state conflicts which in and of themselves might have very little to do with religion. A broadly secular “Western” academic community working in rational, Enlightenment epistemologies might well have played a part in this, with scholars relying on empirical observation and reporting rather than on notions of Divine Providence to explain the interactions among states. Take the discipline of International relations, for example. Nowhere do we see a better example of the triumph of modernist empiricism than in the establishment of the field in the aftermath of the First World War, and especially after 1945 with the intervention of the American Realists. It is only in the last two decades or so that the field has opened up to be a genuinely pluralist encounter with post-positivist methodologies, and even then religion has played a bit part until relatively recently.

By contrast, in the realm of European integration history, the impact of religion has been researched far better. The European project was at heart a Christian Democratic enterprise and there have been ongoing and publicised disputes over the enlargement of the notional “borders” of Europe – religious, geographical, ethnic and cultural. Philip Coupland’s book seeks to embed the religious angle within the wider historiography of Britain’s relations with the nascent European Communities, which he believes has wrongly tended to overlook this wider input into the” politics determining the nation’s relationship to continental Europe” (3). In so doing, he follows the conventional periodization by studying the growth of religious thinking on a unified Europe during the Second World War and then moves on to the early post-war years and the Christian churches’ inputs to British decision-making on the thorny question of Europe in the 1950s. A much shorter and less detailed chapter takes the story through both the failed British applications in the 1960s and accession in 1973.

The story Coupland tells is one of “retreat” (11). The churches like politicians in Downing Street and civil servants in Whitehall gradually lost their wartime fervour for a unified Europe with active British participation and ended up accepting that the British could not and would not confine themselves to a regional role. Contradictions, he suggests, ran right through the British approach in the later 1940s and beyond. “At different times and in different ways Britain was European and not European, part of the (European) Movement but not part of the movement” (89) The onset of the Cold War did little to help the cause of the Europeanists in Britain as national security increasingly became dependent upon the involvement of the United States in European affairs, while a the same time exaggerating Britain’s global focus. Coupland suggests that by the time the British had come round to the idea of joining “Europe” they were already entering the era of a “post-Christian society” (171), although the voice of the churches could and sometimes did make itself heard in national debates.

The relevance of the story told in this book for events today is obvious and important in at least three respects. First of all, it highlights the historical theme of Britain’s ambiguous attitude to Europe. Compare, for example, Blairite rhetoric about giving Britain a leadership role in the European Union with what he actually achieved after a full decade in office. Secondly, it casts valuable light on the role of religion in constructing ideas about British national identity and on the part these ideas played have played in keeping the British psychologically isolated from integrative developments on the continent. Finally this book reminds us of the sheer ideological dominance of the British state in the post-war era. It is striking to read in this book how the inertia and muddled thinking among politicians and diplomas sapped the life out of the British Europeanists. By the time of the applications in the 1960s, it was more a case of choosing the least harmful option for Britain rather than proactively pursuing a positive, principled foreign policy strategy. One suspects that Gordon Brown and his successor might soon be faced with the same conundrum over the Euro.

Oliver Daddow, Loughorough University, England

2a) eds. Katharina Kunter. Jens Holger Schjorring. Changing Relations between churches in Europe and Africa. The Internationalization of Christianity and Politics in the 20th century. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 2008 vii+223 Pp. ISBN 978-3-447-05451-5

These collected essays result from a conference held in Tanzania five years ago, under the auspices of the distinguished Danish church historian, Jens Holger Schjorring. The international contributors deliberately sought to look beyond the usual national or denominational horizons, and here tackle the broad picture of the role of the European churches, particularly in relation to Africa. The preliminary essays look back on the era of the European missionaries and their impact. This colonial survival can be said to have come to end with the All Africa Lutheran conferences in the period 1955-1965. The second section deals with the political dimensions of church life in such troubled societies as Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia, showing the difficult paths the European and African churches had to follow steering between the hazards of the Cold War, communism, imperial dismantling and the search for human rights. The final section invites larger questions, such as the future role of women in the life of Africa’s churches, as well as a concluding essay of African churches in Europe.

2b) Gerald Steinacher, Nazis auf der Flucht. Wie Kriegsverbrecher ueber Italien nach Uebersee entkamen. Inssbruck: Studien Verlag 2008. 379 pp. ISBN 978-3-7065-1026-1

This thoroughly-researched study examines the means and the routes by which Nazi war criminals managed to evade their due fate by escaping abroad, mainly to Latin America or the Near East, in the years after the defeat of the Nazi regime. Among those agencies which helped in these escapes, as has been well known for some time, were both the Vatican’s Commission for Assistance to Refugees and the American Counter Intelligence Agency. Steinacher devotes a whole chapter to the Vatican network, detailing the operations of this pontifical commission and its various branches, as well as to the more dubious activities of the Austrian bishop Alois Hudal, who had been in charge since 1925 of the German College in Rome. He had been an early and enthusiastic supporter of Hitler’s rule, including the seizure of Austria in 1938. He had even written a book advocating that Catholicism and Nazism should collaborate, since their political goals were so similar. Such partisanship was however not approved by his superiors, particularly Cardinal Pacelli, soon to become Pope Pius XII. In fact Hudal was frozen out of the Vatican’s establishment and was eventually dismissed from his positions in 1952.

On the other hand, there is clear evidence that Hudal assisted numerous refugees arriving in Rome, including former Nazis, by easing their way to the Vatican’s Refugee Committee. It is however far from clear that he was fully aware of the criminal records of any of those he helped. Steinacher does not produce any such proof. The fact was that approximately 100,000 such refugees passed through Italy to Latin America in these years. The fact also was that the Vatican Refugee Commission had neither the desire nor the means of checking on each individual’s true identity, let alone their past war-time record. It was enough that they claimed to be good Catholics, were declared anti-.Communists and sought refugee from being repatriated to any part of Communist-controlled Europe. In such circumstances we can certainly agree with Steinacher that the Vatican’s assistance was exploited and misplaced. But the evidence is lacking that the Vatican’s leading officials, apart from Hudal, were knowingly aware that some of those they helped to get to Latin America, and thus escape retribution, were war criminals.

3) Journal articles: Ecumenical review. Vol. 61, no. 1, March 2009
To mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the notable Barmen Declaration issued in May 1934 by the section of the German Evangelical Church, later known as the Confessing Church, this journal, which is the house organ of the World Council of Churches, devotes this whole issue to what it calls ‘The Barmen Declaration: Global Perspectives”. Three articles are particularly interesting for historians, namely those by Keith Clements, Victoria Barnett, and Heino Falcke. In line with the journal’s purpose, the emphasis is on the historical significance of this statement for the wider ecumenical fraternity, but these authors show that, even after so many years, consensus is hard to achieve.

To some, like Keith Clements, the Barmen Declaration was part of a wider realization of the dangers of National Socialism and its attempt to subvert Christian doctrines in the service of its racial ideology. The Barmen Declaration’s resolute defence of Christian orthodoxy and its clear refusal to let other sources of inspiration or control seep into the church’s witness was a vital step to prevent the kind of creeping compromise with Nazism to which a good proportion of the German Evangelical Church membership, and its clergy, had already succumbed. It was also important that, for the first time, Lutherans, Reformed and United German churchmen were able to agree on a declaration, which was in fact to become the guiding document for their principled resistance to the exaggerations of Nazi theological claims, as advanced by such distinguished theologians as Emanuel Hirsh, Paul Althaus or Gerhard Kittel. To be sure, the authors of this Declaration did not intend to make any political statement against the regime. In fact, most of them approved the purely secular goals which Hitler was so loudly proclaiming. But the actions of the pro-Nazi “German Christians” in watering down of the traditional faith in order to be on the winning political side, the repressive measures taken against any dissenting voices, and the readiness to accept Nazi propaganda attacks on the Jews, were the main causative factors, which led to a unified determination to protest. As Keith Clements shows, this clear theological pronouncement was well received outside Germany, especially by the leaders of the ecumenical movement, such as Bishop George Bell, the chairman of the Universal Christian Council for Life and Work. This international Christian community, which met in Denmark only a few months later, was explicit in its condemnation of the official German church leadership, largely due to the guidance provided by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And the long-term effects of the Barmen Declaration played a significant role in the post-war willingness to receive the German Evangelical Church back into the wider ecumenical fellowship.

Victoria Barnett, who is now attached to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, takes a more critical view. She points out that, despite the months of increasingly obvious discrimination and even persecution of the Jewish population in Germany, these Protestant church leaders took no stand whatsoever against such tactics. Protests from abroad were rejected as unwarranted interference in Germany’s internal affairs. The Barmen Declaration said nothing about the Nazi racial ideology, nor did it express any sympathy for the victims of the Nazis’ violence. In fact, many years later, even some of its authors regretted that they had not added a further clause dealing with the Jewish question But at the time, and indeed even four years later, after the Kristallnacht, the Evangelical Church’s silence was stunning. So, in Barnett’s view, the Barmen Declaration cannot be seen as symbol, of resistance, a cry of conscience, let alone an act of solidarity or sympathy with the Nazis’ victims. Yet it was a theologically articulate foundation for the future of the church over against ideological demands, reminding Christians of where their ultimate allegiance should be.

Heino Falcke, who has been a leading member of the Protestant church in East Germany draws on his own experience of the relevance of the Barmen Declaration for his ministry and witness in the German Democratic Republic in the years after 1952. To be sure, the East German Protestants were never tempted to regard the ruling ideology of Marxism-Leninism as a tempting creed to follow for Christians in the churches. They had been too well indoctrinated by anti-communist propaganda. Nevertheless they were faced with the institutional pressures exercised by this totalitarian regime seeking to expunge or at least minimize the churches’ influence in society. Falcke points out that the Barmen Declaration gave impetus to a positive theological response in such a critical political situation. Defeatism, resignation or merely “inner emigration” were not to be encouraged. Rather, he suggests, the Barmen Declaration was received and interpreted in the churches of the G.D.R. in the light of Bonhoeffer’s Christology, being there for all people whether Marxists or Methodists. For Christians, all areas of life belong to Jesus Christ.

There should be no separation or handover to other political or ideological loyalties. This opened the way for an active role for the Churchwithin Socialism, for which Falcke himself was a prominent spokesman. This included a strong witness for peace and social justice, which became in fact the basis for the churches’ participation in the revolutionary movement, culminating in 1989 and the non-violent overthrow of the regime. Above all, Falcke suggests, the Barmen Declaration’s call for the church to witness fearlessly to all people, and to proclaim the free grace of God, was and is a continuing force in the subsequent life of the German Evangelical Church.

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With all best wishes to you all,
John Conway

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October 2008 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

October 2008— Vol. XIV, no. 10

 Dear Friends,

I am happy to tell you that the number of publications on contemporary church history continues to grow. Both Catholic and Protestant scholars seem to be excellently prolific, and not only in German! It is a pleasure to give priority this month to reviewing a new book by a young scholar from California about a much revered Anglican bishop. You should be warned, however, that this review may cause you some distress. Yet in the interests of historical accuracy, we are sometimes obliged to circumvent the worthy adage: de mortuis nil nisi bonum. The second review is of the autobiography of Dr Pauline Webb, aa noted British Methodist, whose services to the Church, both at home and abroad, are here happily recalled.

Contents

1) Book reviews

a) Daughrity, Bishop Stephen Neill
b) Webb, P., World-Wide-Webb
c) Silomon, German Evangelical Church 1969-91
d) Kunter, German Evangelical Church in the GDR 1980-93

2) Journal articles:

a) Daniel, a Russian monastic revival in the 1990s

1a) Dyron Daughrity, Bishop Stephen Neill. From Edinburgh to South India. (American University Studies, Vol. 267) New York/Bern/Oxford: Peter Lang 2008. 365 pp. ISBN 978 – 1-4331-0165-6

Missionary biographies were usually written by other missionaries; hence they were uplifting, even at times hagiographic. But with the overthrow of the colonial empires in Asia and Africa, the era of European missionaries came to an end, as did this genre of mission history. The emphasis today is quite different, and far more critical of the past, and of those whose service abroad was for so long held in high esteem. Dyron Daughrity’s biography of Bishop Stephen Neill, derived from his doctoral thesis at the University of Calgary, is a case in point. Although it deals only with the first half of Bishop Neill’s career, and ends when he left India in 1944, it is nonetheless both contentious and highly damaging to the image widely held about Neill in subsequent years.

Neill died in 1984, leaving behind a voluminous manuscript for an autobiography. It was a while before this could be edited down to a publishable size. The book finally appeared in 1991 with the title God’s Apprentice.But the general opinion was that it concealed more than it told about the author. Particularly it said all too little about the real reasons which had led in mid-1944 to Neill’s leaving his post and returning to England.

The first reviewer of God’s Apprentice was someone who, as a young missionary himself thirty years earlier, had known Neill well, and has since risen to positions of senior leadership in the church. He began by stating that the publication of this autobiography confronted him with a moral dilemma. He could either maintain the conspiracy of silence which surrounded the career of this gifted man, or throw some light on the background of events which brought this career in India to an end. He chose the latter, and now Daughrity has adopted the same course.

Specifically what is referred to was a violent assault by Neill in April or May 1944 upon an Indian schoolteacher at one of his church schools during a counseling visit. Neill demanded that this man accept, as a punishment for his purported misdemeanours, a beating with a cane on the bare buttocks, similar to that used to deal with errant schoolboys at Neill’s boarding school in England. The background and consequences of this “incident”, which were only briefly alluded to by the first reviewer, form the substance of Daughrity’s narrative. For this purpose he has made thorough use of archives in India, Britain and the United States, and a few years ago obtained personal interviews with some surviving witnesses of these events of sixty years earlier. Two of these testimonies, one from a clergyman and the other from a bishop in south India, are fully analyzed in his text, and provide a striking corroboration of the record in the paper trail. They cannot be dismissed as the product of anti-Western or anti-imperialist sentiments. The evidence, as described by Daughrity on an almost day-to-day basis, would now seem to be incontrovertible, even though there is room for debate about Neill’s motivations.

This reprehensible action by an Englishman in authority – and a bishop no less – of inflicting corporal punishment on one of his Indian employees could not long remain secret. The man’s relatives were outraged. At a time when Indian nationalist feeling against British imperial domination was escalating rapidly, this incident could only be regarded as another occasion when Indians were humiliated and subjected, for racial reasons, to the white man’s control. Demands were made for the bishop’s resignation, or else that a full public enquiry should be held by a Court of Episcopal Discipline.

Neill himself quickly recognized the inappropriateness of his behaviour, and according to one of the Indian witnesses, went personally to the teacher’s home village to apologize. But with the threat of publicity, and conscious of his own increasing ill-health, he then sought the counsel of his superior, the Metropolitan Archbishop of Calcutta. Early in June he left his diocese, which is situated at the southernmost tip of India, to take the lengthy and wearisome journey to Calcutta. On arrival, he sought the senior bishop‘s advice, offered his resignation, and asked for an immediate leave to return home for medical treatment. This last request was in fact granted, and within a month Neill had departed for England on a troopship, leaving behind his bishopric irrevocably.

This 1944 “incident” leading to the assault upon an Indian subordinate, was not, according to the first reviewer, due to Neill’s ill-health, depression or insomnia, which were the reasons he gave for his return to Britain. Rather it stemmed from a deeper and darker malady. Neill suffered, he asserted, from some version of controlled sadism throughout his whole life, and had an obsession with punishment, derived from his Victorian Evangelical background. For his part, Daughrity eschews either a medical or a theological explanation. He attributes Neill’s disastrous and repeated outbursts to the unresolved conflicts which characterized his psychological temperament. He points out that Neill’s early days, when his restless clergyman father was constantly changing parishes or going off to a missionary posting in India, deprived the boy of a stable family upbringing. At his boarding school, he was in continual dispute with the tyrannical headmaster, who lacked any sympathy for his pupils. At Cambridge, Daughrity claims, he had an internal struggle about his future, when he was faced with the rival claims of an academic or a missionary career. His first posting in India was to a small village dominated by the long-term missionary Amy Carmichael, who for 25 years had run a renowned mission to rescue abandoned children in her orphanage. But her simplistic faith and pietistic devotion were hardly on the same wavelength as the newly- elected and brash young Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The resulting tensions were only resolved when Neill moved to a new posting. So too clashes developed when he was in charge of the diocesan seminary, between his high expectations of his ordinands in terms of their theological training, and their own humbler prospects in what was in essence a community of lower caste farm workers. Naturally Neill was caught up in the ongoing controversies over the relevance of Christianity and its theology in the wake of the first world war, but it would surely be too much to see this in conflictual terms. And certainly, like all Englishmen of his generation, he was undoubtedly affected by the shattering world-wide events which led to the outbreak of two world wars and to the decline and dissolution of the British Empire.

It would however be presumptuous to accept Daughrity’s thesis that these factors were all productive of the conflicts in Neill’s life, or that his fragile health and mental state was responsible for his indulgence in the physical punishment of others. Daughrity does not suggest that each of these elements was cumulative in effect, or led inevitably to the final chapter of his “formative years” with the loss of his bishopric. Certainly Daughrity paints a picture of a highly gifted man enmeshed with struggle and frustration. Yet Neill’s career, in almost all but the most crucial aspect – his psychological deformity – was not too different from that of other men of his class and upbringing. Many English middle-class boys went through the same kind of boarding school experiences, including corporal punishment, without noticeable harm. All talented undergraduates faced searching, but not necessarily conflictual, questions about their future careers. Many young novices found their first posting uncongenial, or were later to be involved with professional rivalries and disputes in their respective professions. All Britons were affected by the sacrifices of war, even when, like Neill, they were not directly called up for military service. And millions of imperialist Britons mourned the loss of the Jewel in the Crown. It would be hard therefore to see these as contributing factors to Neill’s sado-masochism which caused his downfall.

Despite the inadequacies of Daughrity’s thesis of conflict, which he imposes on Neill’s career and which is needlessly repeated too often throughout the book, we can be glad that he refrains from any moralistic speculations about episcopal delinquency or possible homosexuality. At the same time, he also contributes a positive assessment of Neill’s achievements. Not only does he pay tribute, as do many other commentators, to Neill’s outstanding scholarly works and academic prowess, but also uniquely gives a positive evaluation of Neill’s service as bishop in south India. “All are agreed that Neill’s leadership was strong, if at times onerous. However his concern for the diocese was evident. The progress the diocese made under his leadership was remarkable indeed”. And one of his clergymen is quoted as saying: “The people, even today, say Neill’s bishopric was the Golden Age”.

With such a balance, Daughrity makes a valuable contribution to the study of the complexities of this highly-talented individual and also to the rather neglected history of the church in the southern part of India during the tense and tumultuous days at the end of empire. Daughrity’s plan is to extend the biography in a second volume, and to further assess Neill’s notable career in very different later spheres after his Indian years of episcopal governance. Neill’s subsequent services to the wider church through the ecumenical movement, and his numerous theological and historical writings, deserve the kind of careful recording which Daughrity has already demonstrated. We can look forward to the results.

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1b) Pauline Webb, World-Wide-Webb. Journeys in Faith and Hope. Norwich, UK: Canterbury Press 2006 230pp.ISBN 1-85311-756-0/978-1-85311-756-5

Too few of the leaders of the Christian churches are women. Consequently there are too few autobiographies which describe how these women achieved their prominent positions in a profession hitherto always dominated by men. Pauline Webb’s lively story of her career over the past sixty years is therefore most welcome. She gives us a personal account of her pioneering efforts to use the various branches of the churches to seek to rectify past injustices. She particularly campaigned for those she believes have for so long been denied their full recognition and autonomy, both at home and abroad, both in the church and in secular society. Her talents as a communicator, inspirer and mediator gave her the ability to display a particular sympathy for widely differing groups of people, and a heart-warming senditivity to the needs of women in many different parts of the world.

As a student at King’s College, London, shortly after the end of the second world war, Pauline Webb hoped she might be able to follow her father’s footsteps as a Methodist minister. But, to her great disappointment, the British Methodist Conference rejected the ordination of women, and only changed its mind thirty years later. So she began as a religious education teacher, but with a strong interest in missionary work overseas. Two years later she was called to become the youth secretary for the Methodist Missionary society, and grasped the opportunity with full enthusiasm. It was a particularly exciting time when significant changes were happening in the mission field. Throughout Asia and Africa the handover of political control by the former imperial powers was matched, in the churches, by a similar devolution to local control from the European-based missionary societies. Webb’s first assignment was to go to India and write a script for a film on the newly-established Church of South India, formed out of former British-controlled denominations. This was followed by a similar experience in West Africa.

These assignments enormously widened her horizons, both politically and theologically. She came to see her mission as focussing on four areas of witness and service to which the new world conditions were calling the churches. These were to mobilize concern in the churches for the problems of world poverty, to arouse anger against the evils of racism, and particularly South African apartheid, to build up support for women’s opportunities and vocations, and to campaign for church unity. Her autobiography therefore concentrates on the part she played in these respective spheres and the leadership she courageously provided on a global scale.

Pauline Webb quickly realised the advantages provided by the new techniques in communication. She became adept in using both radio and television, and later on the internet. Hence the book’s title. And her ability to direct such communications skills to the causes she had at heart was undoubtedly the reason why she was invited to become the organizer of religious broadcasting overseas for the BBC in London, where she served for ten exciting years. At the same time she effectively developed her skills as a preacher and promoter of new ideas in furtherance of her aims.

Her opportunities to do so were greatly enhanced by her work on behalf of the World Council of Churches, based in Geneva. First established in 1948 to bring the Protestant aand Orthodox churches closer together in doctrinal unity, the WCC quickly grew with the addition of new churches overseas. And by 1968, when Webb was first sent as a British Methodist delegate to its Assembly, its horizons were expanding to see the church’s world mission in social and political, as well as merely ecclesiastical terms. This Uppsala Assembly had a prophetic ring when it called on all the member churches to unite against the evils of racism and to accept the responsibility of fighting world hunger and poverty. Since these were at the top of Webb’s priorities, it was hardly surprising that she was elected for a six-year term as the WCC’s Vice-Moderator, a leading lay position. This brought her to the heart of the organization’s affairs, and established a very close connection for the next three decades.

One of her first tasks was to assist in the establishment and promotion of the World Council’s Programme to Combat Racism, which raised consciousness as well as funds, and supported beleaguered agencies such as the African National Congress in South Africa. This campaign aroused enormous hostility among more conservative churchmen, who denounced the World Council for promoting terrorism and violence, and even accused it of using church funds to purchase weapons. Webb spent a great deal of time refuting such charges, and pointing out that the small sums sent to Africa were explicitly for humanitarian, not military, purposes. But the argument became part of the wider process of trying to involve the churches in the world’s most significant crises – a stance which many churchmen regarded as politically one-sided, and beyond the scope of any church organization even at the world level. This prophetic witness was exactly what Pauline Webb thrived on, and her engagement in such endeavours was both energetic and rewarding. She was continually on the move attending conferences in different partts of the world, from Mauritius to the Yukon, so that at times the book reads like a stimulating travelogue. But this was all part of the sincere effort of the World Council to bring the concerns and decisions of its leadership down to the ordinary women and men in the pews, and thereby to seek to overcome the barriers of language and distance from its headquarters in Geneva. Webb proved to be a most effective ambassador for such an enterprise. Her infectious enthusiasm, and her steady and unstrident advocacy, especially for women, made her a most welcome guest wherever she went. And her talks on the BBC World Service gave her a platform to share her experiences and her witness to a very wide audience.

It may perhaps be regretted that she did not include more of the substance of the numerous talks and sermons she gave, since this would surely have confirmed the impression of an impassioned and dedicated follower of Jesus Christ. So too it would have been good if she had said more about how the World Council evolved over the years from a theology mainly concerned with church order to a theology whose major emphasis was on human liberation. Inevitably not all the initiativess she so resolutely sponsored have been successful. World poverty is still unresolved. The Christian churches have also just begu to realize their need to relate to other faiths. The position of women still remains marginal in many societies. But undoubtely, Pauline Webb can take heart, and even some of the credit, for the role the World Council played in helping to dismantle apartheid in South Africa, when it offered a platform for such leaders as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. As one who inherited great visions from the past, and contributed to their realization in the present, Webb’s legacy, now handed on to younger church members, especially women, is to inspire them to new and greater visions for the future.

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1c) Anke Silomon. Anspruch und Wirklichkeit der “besonderen Gemeinschaft”: Der Ost-West Dialog der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen 1969-1991. (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. 764 pp. EUR 99.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-525-55747-1.

1d) Katharina Kunter. Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume: Evangelische Kirchen in Deutschland im Spannungsfeld von Demokratie und Sozialismus (1980-1993). (Arbeiten zur Kirchlichen Zeitgeschichte). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. 346 pp. EUR 59.90 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-525-55745-7.

These two books were reviewed for H-German on July 30th 2008 by Benjamin Pearson, Department of History, Northern Illinois University, and are reproduced here by kind permission of the author.

German Protestants between East and West

Between 1945 and 1989 the Protestant state churches enjoyed a unique position in German politics, society, and culture. As the German nation was divided into competing Cold War camps, churches remained among the most important bridges between the two Germanys. Until the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Protestant state churches in the FRG and the GDR maintained close institutional ties as common members of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD). Indeed, even as the Berlin Wall made it more difficult to maintain personal and institutional contacts, they maintained formal unity in the EKD until 1969, when the East German churches split off to form the Bund der Evangelischen Kirchen in der DDR (BEK). Throughout this period of formal unity, the Protestant churches and their affiliated organizations played a leading role in maintaining inter-German dialogue and contact, and in giving expression to the desire of many Germans for political reunification. At the same time, the churches in East and West also developed in different directions, responding to their contrasting social and political circumstances. The creation of the BEK in 1969 offered the East German churches new leeway to reinvent themselves as a “church within socialism,” while West German Protestants were also forced to come to terms with the seeming permanence of both ecclesiastical and political German division. Yet, even after 1969, the Protestant churches in the two German states still claimed to be united in a form of “special community,” maintaining a variety of formal and informal contacts. Both of the books examined in this review deal with the nature of this “special community,” with the important bonds and the significant differences between Protestants in the West and East German states. Anke Silomon focuses on the formal relations between the EKD and the BEK at the highest levels of church leadership. Following a lengthy assessment of the scholarly literature, the book’s extended introductory section surveys developments in the churches between 1945 and 1969, paying particular attention to the process of formal institutional division that led to the creation of the BEK. The remainder of the book addresses two attempts by the leaders of the EKD and BEK to maintain some form of high-level contact, first in a Beratergruppe and from 1980-1991 in the work of the smaller and more specialized Konsultationsgruppe, which focused on the churches’ mutual responsibility to foster world peace. In both of these sections, Silomon maintains a relatively close textual focus on the discussions between group members, with a primary interest in what these interactions can tell us about the nature of the “special community” between the EKD and BEK. She concludes that the Beratergruppe was successful in maintaining the ideal of contact and communication between the West and East German churches, but that it fell short of achieving fully the claims of “special community” between the churches. The group was hindered in these pursuits by the lack of a stable membership over time–exacerbated by the restrictions facing West German church leaders on visiting the GDR–and by the failure of the EKD and BEK to invest their members with greater authority. It remained a useful sounding board for both churches, allowing them to share ideas and experiences with “brothers and sisters” on the other side of the Iron Curtain, but it failed to take on any greater significance. TheKonsultationsgruppe, in contrast, developed into a more fruitful forum for discussion and common action. Founded in 1980, in the wake of the churches’ common statement commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the onset of war, this group was a smaller, more narrowly focused forum where members of both churches could find common ground in exploring the theme of world peace. The proceedings of this group also demonstrated the gulf between the experiences and beliefs of West and East Germans. However, the members were able to engage in much more extensive and fruitful deliberations about basic theological, political, and social ideas.

An extremely well-footnoted and dense reconstruction of the work of the Beratergruppe and the Konsultationsgruppe, Silomon’s study provides an invaluable reference to others pursuing work in closely related fields. However, this high level of detail, accompanied by a reluctance to engage in broader contextualization and analysis, limits the book’s usefulness to the general reader. One cannot help but wish that Silomon had engaged more extensively with the influence of these deliberations on the world outside of the churches, or, indeed, even on the lives and beliefs of ordinary church members.

In contrast, Katharina Kunter’s Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume targets these groups explicitly. Kunter focuses not on the church hierarchy of the EKD and BEK, but on a dense, decentralized network of pastors, theologians, and lay people working in the ecumenical “Conciliar Process for Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation” in the 1980s and early 1990s. In her complex, multi-layered analysis, Kunter details the origins of this ecumenical process, examines the separate and common work of the East and West German churches, and–most importantly–explores the ways in which the ideas and basic assumptions of German participants in this movement were strongly shaped by their different religious and political experiences in the two German states.

Founded in the early 1980s, the Conciliar Process was a broad, decentralized ecumenical movement under the aegis of the World Council of Churches and European Council of Churches. Small groups of European Christians had been engaged in efforts to foster world peace and social justice since the 1960s and 1970s, and these efforts gained an especially public resonance in the protest movement against the deployment of American Pershing missiles in Europe of the early 1980s. With the failure of these efforts, a small circle of German theologians–most notably Heino Falcke in the East and Ulrich Duchrow in the West–hoped to channel the frustrations of anti-nuclear protestors into a form of positive engagement for world peace. Their joint effort came to fruition when the East German delegation to the 1983 assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver issued a public call for the creation of an ecumenical peace council. This movement was given an additional boost in 1985 when–under the guidance of Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker–the German ProtestantKirchentag, the massive lay assembly of West German Protestants, chose the promotion of world peace as its overriding theme. Other large ecumenical conferences continued this work throughout the 1980s while, at the same time, countless smaller consultation and discussion groups emerged across Europe.

As Kunter persuasively argues, the activity of the Conciliar Process, especially at the local grassroots level, played an important role in energizing a generation of Protestant activists in both German states. In the West, several of these activists have since risen to prominent positions of church leadership. However, the effects of the movement were much more pronounced in the East, where ecumenical dialogue for the promotion of peace and social justice created a new, critical public space for East German Protestants. By the late 1980s this increasingly bold and public activity was broadening to include fundamental criticism of the injustice of the East German state itself. Turning their attention to the possibilities of a better, more democratic socialist system, members of Conciliar Process played a leading role in the emergence of East German civil society groups in 1989-90.

Yet, many of the members of these groups, frustrated when their efforts to theorize democratic socialism were overtaken by political events, came to see the collapse of the GDR and the reunification of Germany as a failure and a missed opportunity. In a similar way, figures on both sides were disappointed by declining interest in the movement following the events of 1989-90. Although their efforts had a lasting impact on the churches, in particular by opening up the hierarchy to new ideas and by grooming a new generation of leaders, Kunter argues that the movement failed to sustain a lasting impact on ordinary church members. This disillusionment was compounded, especially among former East Germans, by their difficulty in finding a place for themselves and their experiences in the West German church. In one of the most interesting sections of her work, Kunter locates the origins of this disillusionment in the different religious and political experiences of Protestants in the two German states. She argues that East German Protestants were strongly shaped by their experiences as outsiders in the GDR. Their religious attitudes were rooted in family and congregational life, where they found a separate space for themselves in East German society. This pietistic, oppositional perspective in turn led many to embrace a utopian form of political theology that denigrated all forms of real existing politics. The religious attitudes of their West German counterparts, by contrast, were much more overtly political from the very beginning. In describing the evolution of their beliefs, the West German Protestants in Kunter’s study only rarely referred to the influence of family and congregational life. Instead, most pointed to the formative role of a personal religious-political awaking in their teens or twenties that continued to influence their religious belief and identity as Protestant Christians. This underlying difference in religious identity formation has contributed to numerous misunderstandings within the churches since the early 1990s and remains an important factor in the mental gulf that continues to divide the reunited EKD. Both of these books offer the reader insights into the complex relations between the Protestant churches in West and East Germany both during and after the Cold War. While Silomon’s work will be of primary interest to church historians, Kunter’s has the potential to appeal to a much wider audience. By situating her work within the worldwide ecumenical movement, broadening her research to include a wide spectrum of theologians and laity, and providing a densely layered and compelling analysis of the larger significance of her findings, Kunter has written a work of church history that should appeal to anyone interested in the intellectual and cultural underpinnings of recent German politics.

Benjamin Pearson

2a) W.Daniel, Reconstituting the “Sacred Canopy”. Mother Serafima and the Novodivichy Monastery, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol 59 no. 2, April 2008, p. 249-71.

Wallace Daniel is an American scholar who has devoted much time to studying the rebirth of Orthodoxy in Russia since 1991. His travels took him to the Novodivichy Monastery, or rather nunnery, just outside Moscow, one of Russia’s noblest shrines. There he met the Mother Superior, Serafima,, who for five years from 1994, at the age of 8o, undertook the enormous task of restoring the monastery to its former glory. Monasteries have always occupied a special place in the life of the Russian people. They preserved memory, nurtured the spirit, taught ethics and offered a special way of looking at the world. In the post-Communist society, with its rampant cult of individualism and consumerism, such a service, Mother Serafima was convinced, was badly needed. She therefore opposed the secular trend by promoting the cause of charity, not just to help the poor, but to evoke the Christian virtue of Miloserdie, dear heartedness, which should empower Christians in their relationships with others. Mother Serafima’s short years of service were filled with activity to revitalize not only the external and physical, but also the internal and spiritual vitality of this great monastery. Wallace Daniel’s tribute is therefore well deserved.

Journal note: Church History, the quarterly journal for the American Society for Church History, now edited from Florida State University, has a new pictorial coloured cover page, which is most attractive.

The contents are however the same as before. The latest issue, for June 2008, has a perceptive article by Dae Y. Ryu on “The Origins and characteristics of Evangelical Protestantism in Korea at the turn of the twentieth century” as well as reviews of the two latest volumes in the Cambridge History of Christianity, viz, Vol V: Eastern Christianity, and Vol. IX: World Christianities c. 1914 to c. 2000.

Best wishes to you all,
John Conway

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