>Hitler's actions were not SOLIDLY based on Martin Luther's theology. Even
if
>they were, a Christian is not defined by what people say; a christian is
>defined by God. That definition is found in the Bible. While we may not be
>able to agree on exactly how the Bible defines a Christian, we can narrow it
>down. For example, we can say that the Christian is to be a reflection of
>Christ. Because of this, we can look at a person's actions and compare
those
>actions to what Christ did and taught. Using that rule, we can judge Hitler
>and others. It doesn't mean that we will always be right; it only means
that
>we have drawn a conclusion on the basis of what we see. What about Limbaugh
>or Liddy? Compare them to Christ.
I've heard or read a number of people before who deny that Adolf Hitler was either a Catholic or a Christian. If you have any knowledge of history, the claim is absurd. Just a few comments made by Hitler and his contemporaries:
"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter...In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross...As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice...And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery...When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exploited. --Adolph Hitler, in a speech delivered April 12, 1922 Published in "My New Order;" quoted in "Freethought Today" April 1990
"Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith...Faith transcends reason, and too much reasoning can destroy faith...we need a believing people." --Adolf Hitler, on signing the Nazi-Vatican Concordat, April 26, 1933.
The Catholic Bishops conference in 1933 "expressed joy that through the new state Christianity had been promoted, morality improved, and the struggle against Bolshevism and godlessness conducted with energy and success." In the same year, 1933 "The Catholic Students Union hails the National Socialist revolution as the greatest spiritual breakthrough of our time."
In 1934, responding to an enquiry from the Ministry for Church affairs, the Catholic Seamen's Mission listed the books and papers they provided to seamen. The list included Hitler's own anti- Semitic Mein Kampf, and the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter.
In 1936, the Bishops of Hannover, Wurtemburg and Bavaria signed a statement that said in part "We, together with the Reich Church Committee, stand behind the Fuhrer in the life-struggle of the German people against Bolshevism. In this struggle, the Church mobilizes the forces of Christian belief against unbelief."
In 1939, The Bishop of Hannover, Marahans, was one of the signers of a statement that explained the need for the foundation of an institute to "dejudaize" the Church. "The foundation of this institute is based on the conviction that Jewish influence in all areas of German life, including therefore that of the Church and religion, must be brought to light and eliminated." At the outbreak of war, the Protestant bishops signed a statement which read in part "So at this hour too we join with our nation in intercession for the Fuhrer and the Reich...."
In November 1941, the Vicar General of the Diocese of Rottenburg wrote "The fact that so many believing soldiers are among the lists of the fallen justifies the conclusion that it is above all those soldiers with true Christian belief who have helped to win the great victories."
It is also true that many individual Christians and Priests resisted Hitler. However, the Churches themselves gave their followers a highly ambiguous and collaborationist message. Hitler himself was a life-long Catholic (who, by the way, is still not excommunicated and therefore could be in that much-touted Christian heaven). Bible-based anti-Jewish bigotry bolstered the Third Reich. Julian Streicher, chief Nazi ideologist of anti-Semitism and founder of "Der Sturmer," the most notoriously vile anti-Semitic publication, recommended "the extermination of the people whose father is the Devil." In case you don't recognize it, Streicher is recalling Jesus' "love-filled" bigotry from the "divinely inspired" Bible (John 8:44). At his Nuremberg trial, Streicher said he had never said anything about the Jews that Martin Luther hadn't said four hundred years earlier; they were just doing their god's work in the rise of Nazism.
Consider just distinguished Protestant theologian, Gerard Kitten. Announcing he was a good Nazi, Kitten said he joined not because of pressure, but because Nazism is a "renewal movement on a Christian, moral foundation."
Finally, Hitler was as good at "moralizing" as any contemporary Xian:
"Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth...
Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea."
-Adolf Hitler, not mentioning a specific religion, but sounding astonishingly like the "Moral Majority," Limbaugh, or Liddy (Mein Kampf)
It is nothing more than an absurd denial to call Hitler anything other than a Christian and a Catholic, and it is nearly as absurd to claim that his actions were not based on standard Christian theology. This might not sit well with those Christians who prefer to see their religion as the modernized, sanitized, benevolent version most churches promote today, but my concern is not with making people feel good about a belief I think they would be better off without; my concern is with reality, warts and all.
Claiming that Hitler, Liddy, Limbaugh, et al, are "not true Xians" simply exposes your own bigotry equal to theirs. They too thought/think that only they should be allowed to decide who the "true Xians" are.
Brent Yaciw, ATHALFLB@AOL.COM "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. " - Bertrand Russell