"Human memory and loyalty are affected not only by the past but by what follows it. Social stability and political continuity keep history in the past; instability and uncertainty keep its ghosts alive."
--Victoria J. Barnett.[1]
I have been compelled to revisit Victoria J. Barnett’s seminal work For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford. 1992). I highly recommend reading it. Unfortunately, it’s $50-$70 amazon price point can be prohibitive. For those looking of a less expensive (and shorter!) but still helpful read Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Crown. 2017) available for under $10. A quick Shout out to
for this recommendation!More than an essay, this is essentially a series of “Quotes and Notes.” If you are skimming, I recommend reading my initial A,B,C’s and then just read the quotes. If desire deeper interaction, I’ve included a couple reactions throughout.
A. Embrace of Christian Reconstructionism and “Gleichschaltung”.
What in the world is Christian Reconstructionism? Michael D. Gabbert, defines Christian Reconstructionism as,
“a complex movement of neo-Puritan scholars and evangelical Calvinist theology. Drawing history and the Scriptures together, Reconstructionists attempt to combine a dominion oriented, postmillennial understanding of theonomy with various historical examples of anti-Erastian church-state structures. The goal of the movement is to integrate every aspect of American life into a consistent world view based upon the abiding validity of the Old Testament Law in exhaustive detail. Spearheaded by the Chalcedon Foundation of Vallecito, California, proponents of this movement desire to counter the ever-increasing influence of secular humanism in America today.” … “This religio-political phenomenon is related intimately with the New Religious Right, yet the two groups are not to be identified as the same movement. Less sensational than the more prominent political organizations, Reconstruction is nevertheless a movement which exerts tremendous influence on the political attitudes of Christians at the grassroots level.”
On a popular level today, Christian Reconstructionism is almost, but not always exactly, coterminous with White Christian Nationalism. The popular podcast Sons of Patriarchy has teased out the complexities in three episodes: Moscow Nationalism, The Roots of Nationalism, and The Reconstruction of Nationalism.
It is this growing religious movement that kindled my memory to very uneasy similarities between the United States today, and Germany’s transition from the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) to the Third Reich (1933-1945) as new religio-political formations come together in action (i.e. project 2025 etc.). So I returned to Victoria Barnett’s book, which I read just after my Undergraduate studies.
The importance of the book is that it is not merely a textual history, but an oral history interviewing Germans who lived through the Third Reich, relaying both their remorse and rationalizations over their complicitly and/or resistance as they reflect upon past lives and must continue to reckon with themselves in the present.
I cannot do more than give a couple of examples from Barnett here along with an observation or two, but there is an almost play-by-play similarity between how U.S. Christians are increasingly embracing Christian Reconstructionism in the form of the “Religious Right” and how German Christians capitulated and conformed to Nazism into a Christo-fascist institution under the Third Reich. This progressive change was called “Gleichschaltung”. Such change was progressive, and it was also necessary for centralizing power. Victoria Barnett concludes, "Ultimately, Hitler's might relied upon his ability to unite all Germans behind the Nazi worldview and eliminate any hindrance to this goal. [Gleichschaltung]."[3]
B. Alarmist or Alarming?
I know some folks comparing anything to Hitler’s Germany is simply alarmist, but it really is simply historical. however, it ought to be alarming. Like a clock ringing in the morning such a comparison should cause us to jolt awake and overcome the temptation to hit snooze. In a movement over several years an entire nation--along with its institutional church[4] found unity in an 'Aryan' heritage through a devout sense of patriotism. Many U.S. churches today are unifying, not doctrinally or denominationally, but in a more fundamental patriotism in a national mission.
C. Expiation via Scapegoats
This unifying purpose to make evil foreign to the growing Aryan unity was accomplished by placing evil and guilt upon the heads of other groups, chiefly the Jews, but also the disabled, homosexual, gypsies, etc. This transformation transfigured a ‘new born people’ into a religio-political Behemoth that wielded its power through propaganda, fear, and divisions. The institutional church capitulated and supported the movement in large part, both out of conviction and compromise concerned for material possessions and personal safety.
Rather than write an essay of arguments, I want to let these similarities speak for themselves. Consider and judge for yourself if they do not offer a historical rhyme to the present religio-political milieu in the U.S. I’ve placed some headings above as prompts for consideration (Bolded) and a few scattered thoughts (italicized)
The Christian Nationalism of the US movement
"German Protestants viewed their love for the Fatherland and loyalty to its leaders as patriotic and Christian virtues. The effect upon the German Protestant pastorate--at least in the eyes of one British churchman--was that their 'belief in Christianity was so closely intertwined with a strong nationalism that it was difficult even for themselves to say where the one began and the other ended.'" (p11)
On the steady capitulation of White Church leaders to the Trump Regime and movement after denouncing it in 2016.
"One pastor in Hannover described how, in meetings with Nazi officials, 'one would be pushed further, step by step, until he had crossed over the line, without noticing that his spine was being bent millimeter by millimeter." (60)
Thought: This sounds like the progressive swing I watched in real time toward Total Conformity to a political agenda/leader (i.e. the change from protests against then-candidate Trump from those like Al Mohler, John MacArther, etc in 2016 to progressively more full-throated support of the president in following years). What do you think?
On the confusion and immobility of many Christians discipled in a 'non-social' Christianity.
"At home, we learned that politics ruins the character. I learned a Christianity that was utterly without any relation to social life and reality. It was a pious niche, and otherwise you went along with everything. Total conformity" (Rudolf Weckerling, a pastor's son who became a Confessing church pastor. p12)
"As one Christian wrote in his diary in 1932, 'when an unpolitical person lands in a political age, it's almost as if he comes under the wheels.'" (61)
Thought: In other words, a conviction to a Christianity that carries no social obligation. It seems the direct implication is that the church is not to be prophetic—keep its mouth shut in relation to the state, and the state will support it. This reminds me of the Heritage of White Christianity in the US. Often times one is admonished “Don’t be political” when espousing something that seems ‘left-wing’ but the underpinning political commitment is to maintain the status quo. This was insisted on throughout U.S. civil rights battles which chiefly stemmed from ‘Black Christianity’ and was led by its ministers who condemned the 'Lawfulness' of the present civil legislation when brought under divine scrutiny. CR now offers a social orientation, but has an imagination to do so only through means of political power, in contrast to peaceful protest.
On The Church Unchanging in changing times
"The Church wanted to remain what it already had been for a long time: a piece of the past in a changed world" (p17)
Thought: I have found this to be the knee-jerk disposition of many of us Reformed folks—myself included. We stand on Scripture, Creeds, and Confessions. While tradition can be a good thing—when we are found to be diverging from that faith once delivered in terms of error and corruption the church must change—Reform. CR is particularly “Calvinistic” in the form of its error, which masquerades as ‘The courageous/manly expression’ of the Reformed Tradition has been a great temptation, and even where it is not whole-heartedly accepted, it is often housed, tolerated, or sympathized with.[5] I believe this is because it does offer a correction to many Reformed churches which have neglected social aspects of the gospel altogether. CR advertises a social agenda and organized approach to the Christian’s life in the world. However, it’s tools are the sword, subjugation, and coercion in contrast to cross-bearing, humility, and pleading. Its war is to transform culture to save culture...but what about the people who disagree?
On Transactional Political-Pulpit Allegiance
"Despite claims of 'apoliticality,' then, a pastor's de facto alliance with the state effectively sanctified state authority and gave his own pastoral role additional importance" (13)
Thought: This sounds like a Transactional relationship—Pulpits for Power: Exaltation and promotion for falling in step with the new regime, and humiliation and disregard for speaking against it.[6].
On Loyalty, Allegiance, and the defining of one's faith:
"But the question of national loyalty merely obscured a more profound issue. The majority of Confessing Christians were, after all, patriotic Germans. The real debate within the Confessing Church would be between those who would work within the system and those who would not, between those who recognized the Nazi state as their government and those who came to deny its legitimacy. The most crucial question for these Christians would be whether they, as Christians, were called not only to oppose Nazi policies toward the churches but to resist Nazism politically.
Ultimately, the resolution of this question did not rest on the issue of national loyalty but on how these Christians defined their faith and their church. In Adolf Hitler they faced a formidable enemy. As the records of party proceedings against Confessing Christians show, the Nazis were often willing to tolerate some degree of private faith as long as it did not interfere with the public image of the party. Hitler, however, had only scorn for it: I promise you that, if i wished to, I could destroy the Church in a few years; it is hollow and rotten and false through and through. One push and the whole structure would collapse....I shall give them a few years reprieve. Why should we quarrel? They will swallow anything in order to keep their material advantages...we need only show them once or twice who is the master. Then they will know which way the wind blows. They are no fools. The Church was something really big. Now we are its heirs. We, too, are the Church. Its day has gone." (44)
On the problem of the 'Middle' when Christ has given clarity (see also MLK Jr.'s Letter from the Birmingham Jail and his words regarding the 'White Moderate.'
Martin Neimoller, "The real dividing line is not between us [Confessing Church] and the 'German Christians,' but between us and the middle" (50) at another point viewed the church-state conflict 'not as a question of power, but of evangelical truth.' (52)’
Thought: I was reminded of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the “White Moderate” in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963):
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn’t this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery?[7]
Do you think the comparison holds up?
On Confusion and Conflation over what is political and what is 'church related' and inability to understand the overlay--as well as the politics of propaganda and language
Ilse Harter remembered, "The realization gradually developed that his theological decision also had political consequences...During the entire period, the distinction was always made in the Confessing Church: one was arrested for 'political reasons' and the other for 'church reasons.' it was fine when one was arrested for church reasons! But it was somehow suspicious when someone was arrested for political reasons." (61)
On Freedom through loss—A question of Fear and dependence (see Proverbs 1:7):
"The more restricted the Confessing Church became by the state (particularly after the arrest and trial, in 1941, of the Berlin seminary's examination committee), the freer it became on an illegal, unofficial level to do what it had been afraid to do institutionally." (142)
Thought: See Deuteronomy 6:13; Proverbs 1:7
On the Need to See who Legislation Effects Even when it Doesn't immediately affect 'You, ' and Especially if it Effects the Vulnerable.
On the question of "Knowing what was being done to others" Rev Gollwitzer:
"The sharper the persecution of the Jews became, the more one had to repress what was happening to them. When I told people about it, how often they said: 'Please, don't tell me anything! I don't want to know. I shouldn't know!' Simply knowing was dangerous. One could betray oneself; one might express, without stopping to think, one's horror. That's why a great proportion of the people held this knowledge away from themselves. And after 1945, they could, in a subjective sense, correctly say: 'We didn't know.' Because they didn't want to know. that belongs to the principles of a regime of terror, and here they worked." (148)
"Although the murder of the institutionalized patience as the forerunner of the genocide of the Jews, there were important differences between the status of the Jews and that of Nazism's other victims. Even today, these differences condition our thinking about Nazi Germany. The Nazis planned and carried out the murder of hundreds of thousands of gypsies, disabled children and adults, homosexuals, and political opponents. But it is the Jews who are remembered above all. Genocide evokes a deeper and more lasting horror, and the Holocaust--the murder of the European Jews--has become the primary symbol of Nazi evil." (122)
On FACT CHECKING IS NECESSARY LABOR and “FLOODING THE ZONE” as an effective tactic for propoganda: Much is done outside of our immediate vision, which tempts us to find it tolerable, or write off bad reports as disinformation, but can be known IF WE WANT TO KNOW.
Helene Jacobs recalled that Franz Kaufmann, seeing Jews picked up by the Gestapo, asked, 'Should we live on as if nothing had happened?' This was the question that haunted so many Confessing Christians, before and after 1945. As a 'non-Aryan' who escaped the labor camps until 1944, Dietrich Goldschmidt recalled that the question was difficult, even for him: I lived in Berlin until the end of October 1944. We knew of [deportations] and received the names of people who had been deported....There were a few postcards [that is, from the camps], and we never knew how seriously to take them...these were certainly intended to calm people, the friends, here. But still, there was a contradiction within us, so to speak, which said, 'it could hardly be that they've survived,' and yet still hoped, 'but it can't be that they kill millions of people.' The fact that we know today--that just among the Jews there were six million killed --that was something incomprehensible to us during the war.
Goldschmidt escaped from the labor camp in April 1945, after the camp leaders fled in fear of the advancing Allies. For three weeks, he and his wife roamed the countryside. During these travels, he met several people who had escaped from concentration camps: There, for the first time, I heard in detail how people had been killed in Auschwitz, that is, about the gassings....But I have to repeat that, up to the point that I've told you, anyone could know who wanted to! I have to emphasize that, when people say, 'We didn't know anything,' then one has to ask, 'Did you want to know?' Then the answer will be, 'No, I didn't want to know,' if they're honest. For, if one had wanted to know, then one brought oneself into a dreadful situation. Then one's conscience would have been summoned: Something has to be done. Or one would have had to say, in good conscience: 'Now I can't do anything. So it's better that I don't know anything. Then, at least, I can live this horrible life further. Perhaps you know T.S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedra. There's a place where the archbishop comes from France, and the choir, the women of Canterbury, don't want him: 'Yet we have gone on living, living and partly living...leave us and leave us be.' This phrase has stayed in my memory. Don't burden us with any knowledge; living, partly living, we want to get through. To know was to abandon the false comfort of 'normalcy,' to rise above the mesmerized passivity of those who continued to believe that the Third Reich existed through an act of fate--both accidental and unstoppable. The ideological tangles of Nazism continued to hold many Germans captive. Even when they were aware of the terror being carried out in their name, they could see no other possibility, for themselves or for their country--particularly once the war began." (154)
This last one I have never been able to shake from my mind from the first time I read it when I was 24 years old.
These are some observations and concerns. What do you think? Am I wrong? Did I miss important context or oversimplified?
[1] For the Soul of the People. Oxford. 1992. 9.
[3] ibid 30.
[4] ‘German Christians’ in contrast to the imperfect, but protesting ‘Confessing church’
[5] I myself am a confessional Calvinist and subscribe to the Westminster Standards. I do not mean to call the traditional error, only that the CR movement is one that developed from this tradition. For a dissection of doctrinal issues that distinguished traditional Reformed Christianity from Christian Reconstructionist (I.e. CREC etc) particularly in terms of the notion of “grace” my denomination has authored two helpful reports that give great clarity on these matters: Report of the Committee to Study the Doctrine of Justification: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church and Report of the Committee to Study Republication: The Orthodox Presbyterian Church
[6] Yet, this is nothing new: This transactional behavior was powerfully used by FBI administration of J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972). Despite the fact that Hoover himself could not be called ‘Orthodox’ in his beliefs, conservative Christians received him as a kind of apostle in America to protect ‘White Christian America’ from corruption (i.e. integration) and communism (including those he considered ‘communist-adjacent’). Hoover delivered missives and writings that were read from pulpits, distributed in Sunday schools, and Christianity Today. The particular relationship between the New Evangelicals and Christianity Today with Hoover’s FBI indeed granted a state-sanctified stamp of approval to the movement. See Lerone A Martin, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism. Princeton. 2023.
[7] Available here: “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Foundation for Economic Education. https://fee.org/articles/letter-from-a-birmingham-jail/. 1/20/2014. Accessed. 1/29/2025.