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Kenneth Plank

Dr. Bruce P. Rittenhouse

Religion 3360

5/5/2016

The Responsibility of Protestants in the United States

Judging by the history of Protestant Christianity and the thinkers discussed in this course,

US Protestants have a responsibility to both the Jewish and Muslim communities of the United

States. The way that the German Protestant churches responded to Nazi rule and the Holocaust

was a moral failure. German churches, broadly speaking, were at best complicit with the removal

of Jews, and at worst were supporters of the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority. The moral

failures of the German churches should not be repeated in the United States. First, an overview

of how the German churches responded to the Holocaust, and how it is possible that US churches

could have a similar response to the inclusion of Muslims in US society.

The German churches perceived threats to Christianity and the German state in the time

between World War I and World War II. The rise of communism threatened to spread atheism.

There was also the belief that the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a factual document,

showing that the Jews intended to use the Bolshevik Revolution as a means to take over the

world. The Weimar Republic had replaced the German monarch. Lastly, Jews and other internal

“enemies” were blamed for the Treaty of Versailles (Rubenstein and Roth, 251-252). Similarly,

there are perceived threats on Christianity in the United States. A vocal minority of Christians

treat any inclusivity of homosexual or transgender people as an attack on Christian moral values.

Secular approaches to Christmas celebrations are reported on the news as the “War on

Christmas.” In terms of threats to the United States, immigrants from Mexico seen, again by a

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vocal minority, as stealing jobs. Refugees from the Middle East are feared as potential terrorists.

Unlike the US, however, Germany had an established tradition of a state church. The 29

churches of the German states were unified under the Nazis as the Reichskirche, the single

national church of Germany. The United States, meanwhile, has a separation of church and state.

However, one does not have to go far into United States history to see that, for many Americans,

Christian and American identity are closely tied to one another. American society in the 1950s

put a particularly strong emphasis on this connection in response to the Second Red Scare.

Therefore, the social situations of Germany between world wars and America now are similar

enough to raise concerns, even though history is not exactly repeating itself.

In Germany, the Deutsche Christen, an alliance of grassroots organizations within the

Reichskirche, had important points of agreement with the Nazi party. Both took the stance that

Jews needed to be removed from Germany. The Deutsche Christen supported the Nazi myth of

the Aryan race and its superiority over all other races (Rubenstein and Roth, 254-256). They

called Jesus an “Aryan at war with the Jews” (Rubenstein and Roth, 257). The Deutsche

Christen pledged loyalty to Hitler, viewing his Nationalist Socialism as the “true understanding

of the Christian faith” (Solberg, 18). Emanuel Hirsch, the theological advisor to the Deutsche

Christen, emphasized the importance of the importance of German nationalist and ethnic

identity, arguing that the church should be shaped by this identity (Solberg, 109-111). Reinhold

Krause pushes this same idea, claiming that it was an is Martin Luther’s desire “to lead the way

to the German God and the German Church” (Solberg, 252). This ignores that Luther’s theology

favored “two kingdoms,” in which the state and church govern themselves separately. Krause

refers to Luther as a “German fighter” who “was always on the side of the values of German

ethno-national identity [deutsche Volkstum] in language and customs, in home and family, in

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poetry and music” (Solberg, 253). It should be noted that calling Luther “German” is a bit

misleading, since there was not a united German state at the time Luther lived. While Luther

translated the Bible into German, it likely had less to do with favoring Germanness, and more to

do with the fact that this was the language people around him spoke and understood. There is

nothing to suggest that Martin Luther preferred German ethnic and national identity, or that he

even thought of Germanness in those terms. However, despite the factual flaws in Krause’s

argument, the Deutsche Christen maintained “administrative and theological control of the

German Protestant Church and the hearts and minds of its members,” winning out over the

Confessing Church (Solbeg, 20).

The Confessing Church unlike the Deutsche Christen, rejected Nazi racial policies.

However, the Confessing Church was formed by 6000 pastors not for the purpose of opposing

Nazi rule entirely, but to keep the church from being subordinate to the state (Rubenstein and

Roth, 259). Although, some leaders of the Confessing Church did speak outright against the

persecution of Jews. Karl Barth’s sermon “Jesus was a Jew” was one such instance of defiance

of Nazi racial policy (Rubenstein and Roth, 260). Barth opposed the Nazis much more fiercely

than most other pastors in the Confessing Church, refusing to take a loyalty oath. On the other

hand, Barth also believed that the Holocaust was divine punishment for the Jews rejecting Jesus

(Rubenstein and Roth, 261).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the other major leader of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer

went even further in defiance than Barth by being involved in an assassination plot against Adolf

Hitler (Rubenstein, Roth, 262). In Letters and Papers from Prison, he writes that “the church is

the church only when it exists for others” (382). He opposed the Deutsche Christen idea that the

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church was meant to serve the state. Rather, in his view, the church should serve all people, and

it should do so not through “abstract argument, but example” (383).

In Ethics, Bonhoeffer writes of six failed ethical responses to the situation in Germany.

These same failures could be easily be repeated to the present situation in the United States,

regarding the inclusion of Muslims in our society. The first is reasonableness (78). The desire to

to be fair to both sides is of limited use in regards to the inclusion of Muslims, because one side

wishes to not include Muslims in society at all. This makes for an irreconcilable difference. If

one does not choose a side, then in Bonhoeffer’s words “they withdraw in resignation or fall

helplessly captive to the stronger party” (78). Both options lead to a moral loss.

Second is moral purity. We face this problem at the moment with the upcoming

presidential election. Some would rather not vote at all if they cannot vote for their preferred

candidate in the general election. However, when a presidential candidate is spouting hateful

rhetoric against Muslims and Syrian refugees, then to not act against him by voting against it is

to be complicit with his words. In Bonhoeffer's words, “though their fanaticism serves the lofty

goals of truth or justice, sooner or later they are caught in small and insignificant things and fall

into the net of their more clever opponent” (78).

When Bonhoeffer discusses the ethical failure of conscience refers to making

compromises to “content [oneself] with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience”

(79). It’s the mentality that it’s okay that “random” searches at the airport just happen to

disproportionately affect people of Middle Eastern heritage because that supposedly keeps the

United States safe. That’s it’s okay for certain places in France to ban hijabs because it makes

people feel better. We see this ethical failure on a daily basis.

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Conscience can tie in with the ethical failure of duty, as well. A governor must say that

he won’t let Syrian refugees into his state because it is his duty to protect the people of his state.

Is this mentality any different from German officials who were complicit in killing Jews under

the misguided belief that it was all to protect Aryan Germans?

The ethical failure of freedom is one we see frequently in the United States, due to the

importance of freedom of speech in American society. Donald Trump, and man who is a

presidential candidate, is allowed to say hateful things that stir up angry voters because he is free

to do so. If people try to obstruct him, it can be denounced as inhibiting his freedom of speech, or

inhibiting the freedom of his voters to vote for whoever they wish. However, Nazi Germany

shows what can happen when one man is given the freedom to do whatever he wishes. Limiting

freedom is seen by many Americans as the worst evil. However, as Bonhoeffer states,” hey will

easily consent to the bad, knowing full well that it is bad, in order to prevent the worse, and no

longer will be able to recognize that precisely the worse choice they wish to avoid may be the

better one” (80).

“In flight from public controversy this person or that reaches the sanctuary of a private

virtuousness,” Bonhoeffer writes (80). Private virtue may be one of the most dangerous ethical

failures that Bonhoeffer references. If one is convinced of their own virtue, then what can’t be

justified? Furthermore, there are many people who believe that as long as they are not personally

hateful towards Muslims, then Islamophobia isn’t a problem. It is something that will just go

away as time marches on. Yet, a similar thing was assumed of slavery, which ultimately only

ended after a civil war.

Bonhoeffer says of that church that “it’s first concern is not with the so-called religious

functions of human beings, but with the existence in the world of whole human beings in all their

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relationships” (97). He does not specify relationships with other Christians, but, rather all

humans. This is the ideal that US churches must live up to. US Protestant churches can do well

in responding to the debate about the inclusion of Muslims in US society but acknowledging that

the ethical failures pointed out by one of their faith’s own theologians have come to haunt us

again in the present day.

Johann Baptist Metz gives further precedent for acknowledging that these past failures

have returned. Metz argues for a morale awareness, which “means that we can only mourn

history and win from it standards for our own action when we neither deny the defeats present

within it nor gloss over its catastrophes” (18). Protestants must acknowledge the failures of other

Protestants in the past, so that they can learn and improve. Though Metz is a Catholic theologian,

the Protestant Deutsche Christen had the same issue of being complicit with the Nazi Party that

the Catholic Church did. Arguably more so, since the Deutsche Christen actively supported the

Nazis. Thus US Protestants today have a responsibility to remember the moral failures of the

Deutsche Christen, and to learn from them. Bonhoeffer holds a similar sentiment, claiming that

this remembrance is something commanded by Jesus: “The sayings of Jesus Christ are . . . The

interpretation of his existence, and thus the interpretation of that reality in which history finds its

fulfillment. They are the divine commandment for responsible action in history” (263-264).

“It is . . . [the] bond of life to human beings and to God that constitutes the

freedom of our own life” (Bonhoeffer, 257). Once again, Bonhoeffer does not specify

Christians and non-Christians. Bonhoeffer argues that Christians have a responsibility to

humanity. “Christ does not want us to be first of all pupils, representatives and advocates

of a particular doctrine, but human beings, real human beings before God. Christ did not,

like an ethicist, love a theory about the good; he loved real people” ( Bonhoeffer, 98).

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Thus Protestants have a responsibility to protect Muslims in the United States today,

where Protestants failed to do so in the past for Jews.

In regards to the Jewish community in America, it is similarly important to remember the failures of the past. It is also important to remember that, while the US is not in the same state of anti-Semitism as 1940s Europe, the US is far from free of hate for the Jews. Thus, for that reason, US Protestants should be just as vigilant against anti-Semitism as it should against Islamophobia. While Bonhoeffer calls for drastic measures in response to drastic circumstances, the US, so far, has not quite reached that point. It is important that US Protestants act before the US reaches that point. Though the Deutsche Christen as a group morally failed, there were many individual Christians who sheltered or hid Jews, or spoke out against the Nazis. These Christians should be the model for US Christians today.

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Works Cited

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. London: Collins, 1960. Print.

Metz, Johann-Baptist. “Christians and Jews after Auschwitz.” In The Emergent Church: The

Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeios World, 17-33. New York: Crossroad, 1981.

Rubenstein, Richard L., and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its

Legacy. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987. Print.

Solberg, Mary M. A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement,

1932-1940. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987. Print.