Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor, theologian and author during an incredibly dark period of history, is also one of the church’s favorite stories. Bonhoeffer understood the evils of the Nazi regime, and set about opposing it in a time where many did nothing. Bonhoeffer’s opposition took a few different forms, most notable were, his role in the Confessing Church, which opposed the Nazi regime on a theological basis, and his joining of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Major Hans Oster in their plot to assassinate Hitler.
I love the story of Bonhoeffer, as many do. I love his opposition to an empire in a dangerous time for dissent, I love what he conveys through his writings on the cost of discipleship (although I don’t love reading them) and I love his struggle between the sin of killing someone, and the sin of leaving someone alive. I am, however, faced with a disturbing truth whenever I think about this story: For every Bonhoeffer, there were a thousand German Christians.
Christians in general, Protestants and Catholics, welcomed Hitler and the changes he promised to bring. Hitler emphasized the importance of Christianity to Germany, and even said that Churches were the “most important factors for the preservation of our nationality.” Catholic holidays were declared national holidays, and teaching religion in school became mandatory. Because of these appeasements Christians found it easy to ignore the huge differences in their own ideology and the violent, pagan ideology of the Nazis.
Hitler received an unprecedented amount of support from the Protestant church, particularly from a group known as the German Christians. The German Christians started as a group called the League for a German Church in 1921 by a man named Jachim Kurd Niedlich. Niedlich sought to reform the church with strong nationalism and free it from the ideas of Judaism. The German Christians believed that Jesus was in fact Aryan, and not Jewish, and wanted to eliminate the use of the Old Testament because it was strictly a Jewish book. German Christians also opposed Catholics and Social Democrats, and aligned themselves deeply within right-wing nationalist politics. As absurd as these ideas may seem, they were actually very popular, especially during the Third Reich. As time went on, German Christians, under heavy Nazi influence, endorsed the idea of Hitler as a deity, and on the same level as Jesus Christ. The Nazi swastika was held a sacred symbol, and often placed beside or in the background of the cross. Needless to say, the German Christians were under full Nazi control, and were nothing more than one of Hitler’s many puppets.
I cannot think of Bonhoeffer’s story without thinking of the German Christian story. The story of many European Christians at the time, comes to mind as well, who participated in or sat idly by and watched groups like the Einsatzgruppen, round up and destroy somewhere around six million of their neighbors and countrymen.
What are we to say to a church that behaves in this way? What does it say about Christianity that its followers are capable of acting in such a way?
These questions have been on my mind lately, not only as I think about this period of history, but in other situations like the Crusades, or Rwanda? Thankfully, I came across some encouraging words from Mark Noll’s Turning Points today (I’ll leave you with this because this is already a little long).
Despite a dazzling array of God-honoring triumphs and despite a wide and deep record of godliness among believers of high estate and low, the sad fact is that the church’s history is often a sordid disgusting tale. Once students push beyond sanitized versions of Christian history to realistic study, it is clear that self-seeking, rebellion, despotism, pettiness, indolence, cowardice, murder (though dignified with God-talk), and lust for power along with all other lusts have flourished in the church almost as ignobly as in the world at large… And so along with all the direction and ennobling examples in church history stands also a full record of human wrongdoing. Our response? It could be despair at the persistent human inability to act toward others and toward God as God has acted toward humanity. It would be better, however, to consider the hidden reality that the long record of Christian weakness and failure reveals, for what it shows is a divine patience broader than any human impatience, a divine forgiveness more powerful that any human offense, and a divine grace deeper than our human sin.
Despite a tangled history, the promise of the Savior concerning the church has been fulfilled: “the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt 16:18). But precisely that tangled history points to the reason why Christianity has endured: “I will build my church”
