![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1722\/2023\/06\/Christian-Nationalism.jpg\")
Created by Brad Thibodeaux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>
In front of 20,000 people, devoted Nazi Dr. Reinhold Krause gave a speech in Berlin. Its purpose was to fully unite the new German Church<\/a> with the new Nazi Party. As Mary M Solberg notes in her book\u00a0A Church Undone<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>\u201cThe stenographers who transcribed the speech noted in parentheses the audience\u2019s frequent and enthusiastic responses to Krause\u2019s performance.\u201d (p. 249). God and Country were uniting under the banner of \u201cthe People\u2019s Church\u201d.<\/p>\n This was a huge moment in the story of the German Church. First, it fully laid out the way the Nazi Party would influence the Church. Secondly, it led to a revolt among ministers in Germany. This led to the formation of the Pastor\u2019s Emergency League, which would them transition into The Confessing Church. While I fully support the role of the Confessing Church, it is important to point out fair criticism. The problem was that the State was getting involved in the Church business. Susannah Hesch\u00adel has noted that the Confessing Church did not take a hard stance against the anit-Semitism that the Reich Church espoused. HERE<\/a> is a great article.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s save that for another day. Today, let\u2019s look at the speech, and see how much we have in common in 2025.<\/p>\n Jesus had become soft and weak to the National German Church. Here is a long (but important) quote from Dr. Krause\u2019s speech in 1933:<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if it comes to who rules: we need only one regime, the regime of Adolf Hitler and his advisers. (Very loud applause.) We need only one program for our youth, an education in the spirit of Adolf Hitler. (Applause.) And most important of all: we now need but one mission: to remold our German people\u2014without exception and to the depths of their souls\u2014into German National Socialists.<\/strong> (Very loud applause.) Our struggle has to do with nothing less than the spiritual awakening of our Volk. Our religion is the honor of the nation in the spirit of a combative, heroic Christianity.<\/strong>\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Nazi Party was supposed to be in control of both the laws and the religion of the land. That was the mission for Dr. Krause. And it is important to note that the \u2018German People\u2019 he speaks of are Aryans and Nordics. He goes on later to talk about the \u2018halves\u2019 and their inferiority. But, to continue the line of \u2018heroic Christianity\u2019, he talks about the need to remove \u2018scapegoat\u2019 theology:<\/p>\n \u201cOur state church must also get busy removing all the apparently misplaced and superstitious stories in the New Testament, and there must be a thoroughgoing and outspoken rejection of the rabbi Paul\u2019s scapegoat- and inferiority-theology<\/strong>, which falsified what was a plain and joyful message, namely, \u201cLove your neighbor as yourself,\u201d treat the neighbor as your brother and God as your father.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This was also Nietzsche\u2019s critique of Christianity. He says in his work\u00a0The Antichrist:<\/em> \u201cChristianity has taken the side of everything weak, base, ill-constituted; it has made an ideal out of opposition to the instincts of strong life.\u201d I don\u2019t know many Christians who take their theology from Nietzsche. Dr. Krause continues:<\/p>\n \u201cWe must demand a return to the heroic Jesus<\/strong>, whose life possesses exemplary meaning for us, and whose death is the seal upon this life, the resolution of a heroic and combative life in service to the mission his Father gave him. This is also why we must avoid exalting the Crucified One too much<\/strong>. We do not need as our leader a distant, enthroned God; rather we need only the fearless combatant<\/strong>. Our church needs leaders [F\u00fchrer]; it has a leader [F\u00fchrer] in our Redeemer.\u201d (bracketed words included in the original translation, emphasis added).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Obviously the Nazi Church was centered around the Aryan race. However, throughout the Nazi regime, it became more explicit. This speech is littered with Aryan-centered language:<\/p>\n \u201cThough Luther\u2019s followers, in their limited and confession-bound \u201cchurchliness,\u201d did not understand that his life\u2019s work was a mission for his Germans, one he could not accomplish because he did not at that point have a German Volk, today, as we become a Volk, we are living out the Reformer\u2019s ethno-national [v\u00f6lkische] mission. Today it isn\u2019t the theologian Luther, and even less the professor of theology Luther, who interests us, but rather Luther the German popular preacher who stands before us<\/strong> (applause), who from the depths of his soul cried out, \u2018I was born for my dear Germans, them will I serve\u2026\u2019<\/strong>\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Luther took a dramatically negative view of the Jewish people (which is an understatement). His later writings become more anti-Semitic, and it was passed down to Calvin in the 17th century. According to Krause, \u201cLuther came to a personal, inner experience of God, out of the God-forsakenness of an alienating \u2018monkery\u2019 into the deep attachment to God characteristic of the Nordic God-seeker.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe German fighter Luther was always on the side of the values of German ethno-national identity<\/strong> [deutsche Volkstum] in language and customs, in home and family, in poetry and music. All of this, my fellow Germans, was to him, exactly as Nature was, God\u2019s work and God\u2019s gift.<\/strong>\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Germany as an ethnic group, and their superiority, was\u00a0natural\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0God\u2019s work and gift!\u00a0<\/em>But it goes beyond the superiority of a single race. There has to be a dehumanizing of another. How could the German Church negate the Jewish people? After all, the Jewish scripture is included in the Bible:<\/p>\n \u201cIf we conjure today the spirit of Martin Luther, we should not suppress Luther\u2019s position on the Old Testament and the Jews, when he writes: \u201cTherefore let Moses be the law book for the Jews, and let us heathens not be confused by it. The law of Moses applies only to the Jews. The Old Testament is not of God\u2019s grace, but the result of human effort.\u201d The Jews are certainly not God\u2019s people. (Hearty applause.) If we National Socialists are ashamed to buy a necktie from a Jew, then we should really be ashamed to accept from a Jew anything that speaks to our soul, the most intimate matters of religion. (Sustained applause.)\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>(emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Honestly, most of this speech is racially charged, as you might expect. So, rather than sitting in this muck too much, let\u2019s move to something a little more interesting. A little more timely.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t enough that Jesus became more manly. Or more Aryan<\/a>. Or more like John Wayne<\/a>. These things are part of the equation, but the missing piece is the leader. This leader needed to be anointed by God to do what was needed. They needed to put Jesus back in power. And Jesus (and by extension Germany) was being attacked.<\/p>\n \u201cHence this church was caught up in every state crisis<\/strong>, dragged in each time the state became corrupt, and in the end, with the dissolution of all sense of community, sank into an existence as a mere \u2018religious association\u2019 in the liberalistic state. Marxism had already set itself,<\/strong> under the camouflage of the notion that \u2018religion is private\u2019 to eradicate from the German people, root and branch, all feeling of connection with God, until the day when Adolf Hitler came and swept away this rubbish of alienation, soullessness, and degeneracy.<\/strong> (Strong applause)\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p>\n \u201cAnd this is why as children of God we do not want a doctrine of slavery.<\/strong> This is something that the old fighters in the Party have always emphasized to me: we do not want slavish people, but rather proud people,<\/strong> people who feel themselves bound and obligated to what is godly.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is not about doing the work of God on earth. This is a nation, utterly humiliated and destitute after the Treaty of Versailles<\/a>, trying to show themselves and the world that they aren\u2019t weak. It\u2019s trying to claw back to a position of power. But in order to justify the actions that will have to be taken, the leader needs to be protected. There must be a divine source and \u2018hedge of protection\u2019 around this person.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd if Adolf Hitler is the liberator and savior whom God has sent, then this spirit is the Spirit of God.<\/strong> The new church can never grow alongside the state, but only within it, and all of the same laws of life apply to the church. (Applause)\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s pretty explicit. Dr. Krause is saying that Hitler is God\u2019s appointed savior for Germany. He has been endowed with the Spirit of God. We have the benefit from hindsight, so this is clearly not true. However, Hitler was claiming love for countrymen, mercy, and peace. But, peace came at the cost of exclusion:<\/p>\n \u201cBut I may surely say that the greatest concern has been inspired by the first announcement from the national church: the Peace Decree issued by the national bishop. (That\u2019s right.) He provoked in us German Christians a terrible insecurity, and in our adversaries a sense of triumph (That\u2019s right! Strong applause.), a triumph, my fellow Germans, expressed in the fact that these people have a new burst of energy (Very true!) and think that when peace is offered them they can respond with aggression\u2026 This is the thanks they give us for the offer of peace.<\/strong> (Shouts from the audience: We don\u2019t need any white Jews!) We don\u2019t need any Jews at all in the church<\/strong>. (Loud applause.)\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The table of the Lamb is expansive and invites all to take a seat.<\/p>\n The idea of the separation of Church and State is deeply rooted in the United States. Puritans left Britain (in part) due to religious persecution. The British Church was a state-run Church that told the people how to be Christian. This was common throughout Europe, with State Churches throughout most of the countries in that time. Much of S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u2019s struggle with faith came from the fact that, to be Danish meant to be Christian, and to be Christian meant to be a Dane.<\/p>\n But the churches in Germany were a little different. They had different councils and synods that worked together. This helped keep the Church invested in the local communities \u2013 and this made it hard for the Nazi\u2019s to consolidate their power in the Church. This is one reason that there was a push for a National German Church in 1933. Dr. Krause talks about the importance of the<\/p>\n National Church:<\/p>\n \u201d The emerging Volk wants to shape a new church, and so we cry out in these times to the fiery spirit of Dr. Martinus, asking that he help us to complete his work, to create not a Lutheran, not a Reformed, not a unified, not a synodical or consistorial, not a bishops\u2019 or a General Superintendents\u2019 church, but rather a powerful, new, all-encompassing German people\u2019s church [Volkskirche].<\/strong> (Very strong applause)\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Not only would there be a single National German Church, this Church would be in full support of the Third Reich. The National German Church flew the Nazi flags in their sanctuaries and on the altars. There was no separation between the Church and the State. To be a German was to be Christian, and to be Christian was to be a Nazi.<\/p>\n Many of us think White Christian Nationalism is a new phenomenon. However, Jemar Tisby\u2019s work\u00a0The Color Of Compromise\u00a0<\/em><\/a>sheds light on the White-centric and racist past of American Christianity. Still, most of us might not remember the roots of American Christianity. I highly recommend reading his work if you\u2019re interested in the history of the Church in America.<\/p>\n As I finish here, I\u2019d like to take a few paragraphs to talk through what we\u2019ve seen become more prevalent\u00a0and more acceptable\u00a0<\/em>in American Christianity. While there has always been racism and White supremacy in the American Church, my goal is to show how we are falling for the same false promises and fear tactics that worked in Nazi Germany. I\u2019m reminded of a quote often credited to Mark Twain, \u201chistory doesn\u2019t repeat, but it often rhymes.\u201d<\/p>\n Historian and writer Kristin Kobes Du Mez talks a lot about the action hero Jesus. In her book\u00a0Jesus and John Wayne<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>she looks at post-war America as having a masculinity problem. Christianity was viewed as being weak and too feminine. In order to change this, Jesus had to be turned into an action hero and warrior. She notes where this came from, \u201cThe unspoken mantra of post-war evangelicalism was simple: Jesus can save your soul; but John Wayne will save your ass.\u201d<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not just historians and left-wing progressive Christians that are noticing this. Russell Moore, former President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, resigned after increased White Christian Nationalist pressure. After leaving the Southern Baptist Convention altogether, he has become outspoke against the direction of Conservative Evangelicalism. As he said in an NPR interview:<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt was the result of having multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching \u2014 \u201cturn the other cheek\u201d \u2014 [and] to have someone come up after to say, \u201cWhere did you get those liberal talking points?\u201d<\/strong> And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, \u201cI\u2019m literally quoting Jesus Christ,\u201d the response would not be, \u201cI apologize.\u201d The response would be, \u201cYes, but that doesn\u2019t work anymore. That\u2019s weak.\u201d<\/strong> And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we\u2019re in a crisis.\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It should come as no surprise that White Christian Nationalism promotes the superiority of Whiteness. While it is more visible, it is still often coded. For example, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green said in a 2022 interview<\/a>, \u201cWe need to be the party of nationalism and I\u2019m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.\u201d The wording sounds patriotic, but, knowing the context of the phrase (which I\u2019m sure she does), is a dog whistle for those who agree. And let\u2019s not forget about the recent \u2018Roman salutes\u2019 by Elon Musk<\/a> and Steve Bannon<\/a>, both integral to the Trump Administration<\/p>\n Pastors like Greg Locke have openly supported Christian Nationalism. From him saying \u201cYou cannot be a Christian and vote Democrat in this nation<\/a>\u201c, to his involvement at the January 6 insurrection, he is the poster child of Christian Nationalism. After the attempted insurrection, a group of over 1,400 faith leaders of various political backgrounds signed an open letter condemning the action. A quote from the letter<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cWe choose to speak out now because we do not want to be quiet accomplices in this on-going sin\u2026 Just as it was tragically inconsistent for Christians in the 20th Century to support the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi ideology, it is unthinkable for Christians to support the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, QAnon, 3 Percenters, America Firsters, and similar groups.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his first term, Trump was characterized as an imperfect leader who would get the work of God done. This isn\u2019t unheard of in the Christian story \u2013 the Hebrew Scriptures talk about God working through the kings of their oppressors. Some thought Trump would be the American Cyrus the Great. This Persian king in the 4th century CE conquered Babylon and let the Israelites return to their land. Celebrity pastor named Jonathan Cahn claimed he was Jehu<\/a> \u2013 the Jewish king who restored godliness to Israel:<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump, you were born into the world to be a trumpet of God, a vessel of the Lord in the hands of God. God called you to walk according to the template; he called you according to the template of Jehu, the warrior king.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n However you figure Trump\u2019s anointing, it only gained favor after the attempted assassination<\/a> on the 2024 campaign trail. This \u2018imperfect vessel\u2019 of God\u2019s hand can seemingly do no wrong. As president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute Robert Jones<\/a> says, the MAGA movement is bringing about the \u2018promised land for white Christians\u2019:<\/p>\n Most broadly, his Make America Great Again mantra, with its mix of racial grievance and nostalgia for a time when white Christians were the undisputed cultural and political majority in the country, is tailor-made for a group that sees itself as a people who have been denied their divinely ordained place as the chosen people in an America they envision as a promised land for white Christians.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My wife and I were looking for a church a few years back. We found one online that we thought we might like and we headed out Sunday morning to check it out. While we were pulling up, we noticed some little American flags on the lawn. This church was in a larger building so we thought it might not be theirs. Even though we didn\u2019t want a church with an American flag, we went in anyways. However, we forgot it was 4th of July weekend.<\/p>\nAction Hero Jesus in Germany<\/h2>\n
A Race-Centered Church<\/h2>\n
God\u2019s Anointed Fighting for Jesus<\/h2>\n
The Church Reinforces the Empire<\/h2>\n
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<\/a>America\u2019s \u2018New\u2019 Christianity<\/h2>\n
American Action Hero Jesus<\/h3>\n
White Christian Nationalism<\/h3>\n
Donald Trump\u2019s Anointing By God<\/h3>\n
Blurring the Lines Between God and Country<\/h3>\n