<Table Of Contents

Seven Propositions & A Letter

by Joshua Armstrong, 2024 Clergy & Religious Leaders Fellow

This piece is a two-part project meant to prime us, as decision-makers, not to confuse our first response to contemporary ethical problems with the best response. The first portion focuses on lessons learned, specifically from church action and inaction in Nazi-era Germany. The second piece imagines a senior devil writing to a junior devil today. C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, of course, inspired this part. My two aims are to encourage: (1) meaningful conversations about the clergy’s response to the Nazi rise to power and (2) ethical vigilance in daily life.

(1) “When Adolf Hitler came to power, 97 percent of the German population considered itself Christian.”1 If I’m honest, I want to be able to claim that Christians serve as a corrective to ethical drift…but 97 percent of Nazi-era Germans called themselves Christians.2 Christians and others should wrestle with why and how various well-educated professionals eagerly followed Hitler.3 As Robert Ericksen puts it, neither rationalism, intellectual capacity, nor Christian values protected many of the country’s brightest minds from supporting Hitler.4 Indeed, they offered all these things to Hitler, who functionally served as an idol or “god.”5

(2) The Nazi-era church’s best opposition efforts still failed to condemn antisemitism.6 While individual Christians (e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer) boldly resisted Nazi policies, many churches never presented a unified opposition to antisemitism. FASPE educators and other historians note that when the church did resist, she often limited support to Christians of Jewish descent (e.g., condemning legislation which forbid so-called “non-Aryans” from the pastoral office) without condemning broader mistreatment of Jews.7 If we follow Philip Rieff’s observations that culture writ large provides controls and permission for human behavior, German churches failed to resist the state’s gross expansion of permission for its citizens to slander, steal, and murder Jews and others.8 Through silence or full-throated support, church leaders allowed (or failed to forbid) German Christians to follow their leaders, whoever they were and wherever they led.

(3) Some theologians who supported Hitler appealed to natural theology while simultaneously rejecting Christ-centered theology as too “narrow.”9 In other words, some theologians, i.e., Deutsche Christen (DC), acted as if they could discern God’s will clearly in (natural) history apart from Scripture and ultimately Jesus Christ.10 They assumed Hitler’s rise to power signified God’s favor and made him a representative of God’s will.11 A minority of Protestant Christians (later known as the Confessing Church) sought to distinguish themselves from the DC group via the 1934 Barmen Declaration. DC theologians responded in writing, thanking God for giving “to our people in its time of need the Fuhrer as a ‘pious and faithful leader.’”12 DC theologians demonstrated “an extraordinary willingness […] to deny the Jewishness of Jesus […and]submerged historical reality in their commitment to Nazi antisemitism.”13 Ideology drove their interpretation of Scripture and history. Rather than God, the party’s will became their measure of both “success” and holiness.

(4) By allying themselves with political ideologies, many theologians served as political apologists and therapists but not as pastoral leaders. Some theologians served as apologists for Nazi ideology; others merely sought to affirm troubled consciences formed by Nazi ideology.For an extreme example, consider Gerhard Kittel. After observing that some Christians had “a bad conscience when they think about the Jewish question,” he wanted to assure them that “the fight against the Jews can be conducted from the platform of a conscious and clear Christianity.”14 Indeed, in his mind it was “not enough to base battle on racial points”; One had to find a “religious foundation” so things could be carried out in a “German and Christian manner, thus allowing us to come to clear unambiguous decision [about the Jews].”15 Christian clergy are called to recalibrate consciences to the will of God not the zeitgeist.16

(5) Charitable hearing, or putting the best construction on what one says and does, should not lead to deafness. Some German Christians found themselves saying “if the Führer only knew…” Ericksen observes that “even if they [Christians] read disparagement of Christians in [Hitler’s book] Mein Kampf, Protestants could read it as a primarily an attack on the Catholic Church, perhaps, or as an appropriate critique on institutionalized, politicized, Church.”17 In other words, they were subject to the same selective hearing as all of us.

(6) Fear of the revolutionary left facilitated the handover of power to the revolutionary right.18 Many Christians welcomed a regime on the right. They opposed any move to the left so long as it was anti-communist.19 The discontent, fear, and suspicion were so great that Hitler legally gained authority (via the Enabling Act) to enact laws without permission from the parliament or the Reich President. In the face of crisis, many looked to him to do what the act stated: “remedy the distress of the people and the Reich.” While Hitler promised to grant “due influence” to the churches in “school and education,” they would learn that the Nazi’s used language that they could interpret narrowly and according to their interests.20

(7) Politicized universities promoted scholars on account of loyalty to the dominant political ideology rather than merit. Politicized universities initiated perverted hiring processes that undermined prior standards for professors.21 For example, Ericksen observes that without a doctorate or equivalent credentials, political appointee Eugen Mattiat was made a professor and chair of German Volkskunde (folklore) at the University of Göttingen to increase student appreciation of Germanness (racial, linguistic, and anthropological).22 Others, like Prof. Walter Grundmann, set out to know the “Aryan Jesus” apart from his Jewishness. In his mind, he drew courage from Martin Luther’s daringness to speak of Christianity apart from the Pope.23 As sociologist Uwe Simeon-Netto and others note, fleeing from history and God typically results in the creation of a secular religion catered to the zeitgeist.24

Screwtape, as imagined by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters25 to Scab:
Imagining a Letter from a Senior to a Junior Devil before an Auschwitz tour.

 MY DEAR SCAB,

(1) Today, you will take the patient through Auschwitz. You will inevitably swell with pride watching their reactions to our past victories. Do not let this distract you. You wrote to me about the patient’s sudden interest in ethics. You worried that the experience might shake them from their indifference to ideas of good, evil, religion, and the like. Now in panic you write to me about your plan to stir up fear…Scab, think for a moment! Your pride blinds you.

(2) Fear. As if that will keep them from the Enemy’s camp! Fear is momentary. Worse, fear might alert them to ignorance, leading to unprofitable questions that would disrupt our entire project. We do not want them to be alert; we want them to be certain, self-assured, confident, and blind to their limits. Let them assume: “what I know is all I need to know, and what I do is all I need to do.” That’s the spirit of our Father below—not fear. We need narrow, focused attention now…not that alert, vigilant sort of attention that might interrupt the virtual world you’ve been building around the patient.

 (3) To control for the complexity of our project—and the Creator’s annoyingly complex design of the human mind—you must keep them away from conversations with real other people. Instead, keep them conversing with their ideas of people. Your job is to move them out of the concrete world into an abstract one…move them to think and deal with people according to categories and classification systems. Let these categories be things they can parrot to a few others to signal who’s in and who’s out. They are most prone to slip into suspicion and anger when they engage in this sort of talk without realizing it is a mode of knowing the world that neglects context and broad attention to actual other creatures. Exploit this, and you’ll do well.

 (4) Your mission is to nourish anger and resentment. Remember, your patient is of the same flesh and blood as the builders of Auschwitz. They followed our weaselly champion’s thousand-year vision because he gave them a way out of their intolerable moment. He did not need to incite rage so much as pave the way for thinking and acting according to his classification schemes. His virtual world became their virtual world. And so, his enemy, theirs. Once group classification lines were laid down along with a storyline to make even the cruelest of them feel like a victim, we had them. Can you remember it!? The Jews were held in contempt for simultaneously being all-powerful and entirely weak! Germans were victims after Versailles, and yet somehow able to plunder their helpless neighbors and send them to our camps! You need not worry about logic or reasoning; just distract and stir them. Though we despise patience in them, do be patient…

(5) While he remains our enemy, recall the words of that scum of the world the “Apostle” Paul. Sin is like leaven, and just a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.26 Indeed, sin is a living organism we can work with that grows and spreads. Feed it all the sweet sugars it wants. Let it fester and spread. You will do well to remember this fact while keeping the patient thinking of sin as if it were some sort of stagnant thing, like a past deed or broken rule…you best let it fester by keeping all you can out of view. Keep him narrowly focused, nourishing animosity after encountering each new thing.

(6) Now, move along. Push the patient quickly through grief and fear. Let resentment simmer. We can work better with this state of affairs. They’ll never assume who’s behind it.27

            Your affectionate uncle,
                  Screwtape

Joshua Armstrong was a 2024 FASPE Clergy & Religious Leaders Fellow. He is a Master of Divinity candidate at Concordia Seminary, Saint Louis.

Notes

  1. Ericksen, Complicity, 9.
  2. Ibid, 9. “This highly educated, technologically advanced, Christian nation voted for Adolf Hitler . . . then followed his lead, both in the implementation of his vicious politics of antisemitism and in the various stages of World War II.”
  3. Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 5. Steigmann-Gall observes two arguments among historians asking how there could have been pro-Nazi elements in the church but not pro-Chrisitan elements in Nazism: (1) Christians deceived themselves or (2) they were not Christians.
  4. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler, 27.
  5. Luther’s Small Catechism, 13, 59. “What does it mean to have a god? It means to trust in and rely on something or someone whole-heartedly to help us in times of need and to give us all good things.” Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 1. In May 1939, Protestant leaders gathered to open the Institute for the Study of the Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life. Its goals were to create a de-Judaized church for Germany, to develop new biblical interpretations . . . and to redefine Christianity as a Germanic religion. They abandoned Christian doctrine and prioritized caring for the supposed “Aryan spirit” (my scare quotes, of course).
  6. Ericksen, Complicity, 26-27, 99. Ericksen calls the 1934 Barmen Declaration a “small victory” because only 20 percent of German Protestant pastors supported it, while 80 percent ignored or opposed it. Welch, Herman Sasse, 66. Welch notes theologian Herman Sasse’s plea for “cooperation among different confessional churches in all ways except matters of doctrine and confession” failed and, with it, chances for a united opposition in purpose and goal.
  7. Welch, Herman Sasse, 66; Ericksen, Complicity, 27. Martin Niemoller created the “Pastor’s Emergency League to fight for the idea that Christian pastors of Jewish descendent were simply Christians and should be considered equal to any other Christian in the eyes of the church.”
  8. Carl Trueman elaborates on Philip Rieff’s work in his book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Sexual Revolution. Trueman offers a summary here: URL = https://ps.edu/how-philip-rieffs-three-worlds-help-us-understand-cultural-change/.
  9. Ericksen, Complicity, 97. “Althaus and Elert also had theological objections to Barmen. They criticized the Christocentric narrowness inspired by Barth.” Many theologians tend to distinguish between what can be known about God from nature (history and our own personhood), i.e., natural theology, and what is revealed in Scripture, i.e., God’s self-revelation.
  10. Cf. Hebrews 1:1-2. Acknowledging God’s sovereign rule is far different than insisting on knowing God’s will and purposes behind every historical event.
  11. I recommend Dr. Joel Biermann’s book Wholly Citizens for a discussion of Two Kingdoms theology from a Lutheran perspective.
  12. Ericksen, Complicity, 96-99.
  13. Ibid, 19.
  14. Ericksen, Complicity, 31.
  15. Ibid, 31. Italics are from the author.
  16. E.g., 2 Timothy 4:1-5. “Preach the word in and out of season […] people will not endure sound teaching, but have itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth.”
  17. Ibid, 47. Text brackets are my own.
  18. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation reminds us that the reverse can occur, too, of course.
  19. Ibid, 60. Also, Steigmann-Gall, Holy Reich, 13. Steigmann-Gall opens his chapter titled “positive Christianity” by quoting one of Hitler’s propagandists, Joseph Goebbels: “The struggle we are now waging today until victory or the bitter end is, in its deepest sense, a struggle between Christ and Marx.”
  20. Ibid, 53.
  21. Ibid, 147.
  22. Ibid, 146-147. Italicized emphasis on “racial” are mine. “Without doctorate, Habilitation, or even an honorary doctorate, Mattiat then made the jump to a professor’s chair […] This surprise appointment in 1938 […] preceded by no search, no short list, no trial lecture, in fact, by no discussion with the University.”
  23. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus, 2. “Grundmann noted, people in Luther’s day could not imagine Christianity without the Pope, just as today they could not imagine salvation without the Old Testament, but the goal could be realized…the Bible would have to be purified.”
  24. Siemon-Netto, Fabricated Luther, 31. Simeon-Netto suggests that cliches are used more frequently as we turn away from God and turn away from history. As does Trueman, Triumph of the Modern Self, 74, 88-93. Under the header: Third Worlds as Antihistorical.
  25. Inspired by C.S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters: Letters from a Senior to a Junior Devil published by Harper One, Reprint Edition 2001.
  26. 1 Corinthians 5:6.
  27. Armstrong, Bitterness and Anger in Ephesians, Archetypes, & The Bi-Hemispheric Structure of the Brain. Many of the ideas in this letter come from an essay I wrote for Grapho: Concordia Seminary Student Journal. URL = https://scholar.csl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=grapho.