Today, November 9-10, marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht (1938), or “the night of broken glass,” which marked a turning point in the persecution of Jews in Germany by the Nazis from economic and cultural to outright violence. This Sunday, November 11th, marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One (1918), known as Armistice Day, where we get our Veteran’s Day from. These events, as we know, are connected.
After World War I, the harsh conditions imposed in the Treaty of Versailles created a loss of economic prosperity and political weakening for the German people which led to a corresponding loss of confidence in themselves and fear for the future. Germany was in shambles and was not recovering. By the early 1930s, Hitler arose and was seen as the savior to restore Germany’s fortunes. His charismatic personality and rhetoric convinced the German people, including the church, that his program for recovery would bring Germany back to prominence as a leader among nations. From a religious perspective, he even convinced the Lutheran church in Germany to go along by exploiting their own fears and latent prejudices, even after he began his moves to oppress the Jews.
After Hitler’s rise to power, persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany grew each year. But, things took a violent turn in November of 1938. Using the assassination of a Nazi diplomat in Paris by a German born Polish Jew as pretense, the Nazi government unleashed a wave of violence against Jews across the country. The Wikipedia entry for Kristallnacht states: “Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland and over 7,000 Jewish businesses were either destroyed or damage. The British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from the foreign journalists working in Germany sent shock waves around the world. The British newspaper The Times wrote at the time: “No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday.”
“Additionally, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.”
Before and after Kristallnacht, many in America praised Hitler and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The German American Bund built quite a following with large rallies and organizing, and even Charles Lindbergh and his “America First” campaign emerged by 1940 to keep America out of the growing War in Europe. They were successful in influencing Congress and the American people to embrace isolationism as evil grew until we were attacked at Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. Going back a few years before this, even some from the Southern Baptist delegation to Berlin from America in 1934 for the Baptist World Alliance (BWA) congress praised Hitler for cleaning up German society from what they identified as immoral behavior.
The Baptist World Alliance meeting in Berlin in 1934 should be seen with great interest for those studying the rise of Naziism, how it was viewed at the time, and how people around the world turned a blind eye to what was growing and what would lead to Kristallnacht and then later the Holocaust. William Lloyd Allen, chronicled the response of the 1934 Southern Baptist delegation to Berlin by saying that parts of the delegation (especially correspondents from the state Baptist papers) were favorable to Hitler’s approach, even after he had begun to crack down on the Jews and take firm control over Germany. But, they joined with Baptists around the world who apparently targeted Germany in condemning racial hatred and nationalism while passing a resolution that claimed nationalism could lead to war.
Allen, writing as a church history professor from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1982, wrote an article on this entitled, “How Baptists Assessed Hitler.” He asked why Southern Baptists visiting Germany in 1934 responded favorably to Adolf Hitler when they returned to the United States? Did they not have discernment? Couldn’t they see the monster that he was to become? Other Christians in Germany, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were seeing it. Why couldn’t members of the Southern Baptist delegation? We must remember that Hitler was pulling the German people out of the morass of economic depression that occurred after World War I. Because he helped restore the economic fortunes—in large part by military spending and expansion—of the German people and was filling them with pride again over being German in a growing Nationalistic fervor, many were looking upon his attempts at resurrecting the German nation with approval.
Allen also points to the way that Southern Baptists of this time period did theology and saw the world. Instead of thinking holistically, they saw morality from a personal perspective. The Southern Baptist delegates approved of Hitler’s personal stance against the use of alcohol and tobacco. He opposed women smoking cigarettes and “wearing red lipstick in public.” Other Baptist visitors from the South were excited that Hitler had cracked down on sex literature and risqué and violent movies and that he was burning books, especially those of the Jewish and communistic variety.
Allen shows us that Southern Baptists concerned deeply with personal morality, order in society, and social sins related to alcohol and sex were not able to see the larger evil that was emerging in the culture. They missed the forest of anti-Semitism and growing nationalism and militarism that would soon engulf the world, because the branches of personal immorality and debauchery were being pruned by force and that pleased them. Order and “right” living was more important than justice and mercy. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, they should (to paraphrase) not have neglected the former while attending to the latter. Personal morality and holiness before God is extremely important, as is right worship and theology. But that morality and holiness and theology is worthless if it does not lead to justice, mercy, humility, righteousness, and sacrificial love toward God and others, especially those who are being oppressed. There is no holiness when one turns a blind eye to his neighbor in the ditch along the side of the road or allows exploitation of the weak and needy. This is even more true when one, through their religion, perpetuates that exploitation through neglect or support. Holiness is defined by who Jesus is and what he did and commands us to do, not just by our personal behavior. Because Baptists and other evangelicals in the Germany of 1934 were more focused on the creation of a society that would be good for them and their way of life in regard to moral virtue, as they tried to understand God’s intent for them, they missed the evil means being used to bring about the ends of which they approved. Their eyes were blinded by their own vision of what was appropriate and they missed the evil incarnate right in front of them.
Allen cites reasons for this blindness, chief of which involved how Southern Baptists gave evangelism primacy over other concerns. Quoting Baptist leaders present at the conference, Allen shows how their main, and possibly only focus, was on creating space and freedom for evangelism. They were not concerned with justice or economic issues or the reign of terror that was beginning in Germany that would ultimately lead to the murder of millions. They wanted the door to be open for evangelism so that people could get saved and go to Heaven when they died. Their view of the Gospel and its implications was truncated in the sense that it was only concerned with personal salvation and personal morality and they were willing to accept great moral evil in society in relation to how people were treated so that they could be free to do evangelism. As Allen said, “Some Baptists believed that evangelism and the world order existed on separate planes that never intersected, and that the church belonged only on the evangelistic plane. As long as governments like Hitler’s did not interfere with soul-saving, they could be tolerated.” This view of the almost complete separation of the spiritual plane that they claimed the gospel was concerned with, from the worldly, temporal plane that was of secular concern, explains well how white Baptists in the South were able to separate concern for the treatment of blacks in the society that they dominated from their religion where they worshiped. Also, their participation in the racist segregated culture that dominated the South could very well have blinded them to what was arising in Nazi Germany. Were they separating their transcendent, personal faith from how people different from them were treated and how society was structured in the world that they lived in? There is strong evidence of this.
To understand how the end of World War I led to Kristallnacht, we have to remember that Hitler was not always seen as “Hitler” and his ideas were accepted by many in the 1930s, especially in an America that was also racially segregated and imposed Jim Crow laws upon its black citizens and shut the door to immigrants based on their race and country of origin. Southern Baptists missed what was happening in Germany in 1934 perhaps because it made sense to them at the time. The post-BWA report from The Baptist and Reflector, the Tennessee state Baptist paper in 1934, seems to confirm that theory. Just a year later, in 1935, the Nuremberg Race Laws defining who was truly German and who was Jewish were created in Germany, tying citizenship to “blood and soil” and German heritage rather than who lived in Germany. James Q. Whitman in his recent book, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, chronicles the connection between Jim Crow, racism, and anti-immigrant fervor in the United States and the Nuremberg Laws and rise of anti-semitism in Germany (See New Yorker review). By 1938, Kristallnacht removed the cover from what was happening as the world began to see the ugliness of German Nationalism run amok. Less than a year later in September of 1939, Germany would invade Poland and World War II would begin.
But, there were some who saw the danger growing and who tried to warn the German church. In 1933, a year before the BWA Congress and five years before Kristallnacht, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian, wrote an essay called, “The Church and the Jewish Question.” The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum features Bohonoeffer’s essay and they say, “On this point, Bonhoeffer was explicit about the church’s obligations to fight political injustice. The church, he wrote, must fight evil in three stages: The first was to question state injustice and call the state to responsibility; the second was to help the victims of injustice, whether they were church members or not. Ultimately, however, the church might find itself called “not only to help the victims who have fallen under the wheel, but to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself” in order to halt the machinery of injustice.”
What would have happened if the German Lutheran Church had listened to Bonhoeffer in 1933? What if the church would have stood with Jews who were being persecuted from the very beginning, instead of joining in the blame and accusation toward them that grew throughout the 1930s? Could the Holocaust have been prevented? Could the millions of deaths of World War II have been avoided? German Christians after the war’s end seemed to think so.
On the first annual Day of Repentance and Prayer after the war ended in November 1945, church leadership in the Berlin-Brandenburg region called upon their parishioners to examine their hearts, repent, and ask for forgiveness. They engaged in a period of introspection and asked how the evil of Hitler and the Nazis could spring up in the nation that fostered the Protestant Reformation. How did the land of Luther give rise to the plague of the Third Reich and the ovens of Auschwitz? These ministers issued the following statement about their own guilt:
“We did not fear God above all the powers of men and governments, we did not trust and obey God unconditionally—that is what brought us under the sway of the tempter, that is what cast us into the abyss! That is what gave the demon of inhumanity free rein among us.
“And now the righteous judgment of our holy God has fallen upon us. Before His judgment seat we are not subject to the verdicts and standards of other human beings who also stand in fear of His judgment and are thrown upon His grace. Before God we are being questioned concerning our own guilt, our great, immeasurable guilt. Before God we cannot excuse ourselves.
“Before Him there cries out against us all the innocently shed blood, all the blaspheming of the His Holy name and all the inhumanities which occurred in our midst especially against the Jews. If we know ourselves to be innocent—humanly speaking—of participating in the atrocities . . . we yet cannot, before God, escape the great burden of need and guilt which rests upon us.”
Let Kristallnacht and Bonhoeffer’s call and what happened to the Jews in the 1930s be a warning to us. The Church slept and approved of the evil rising in their nation because they weren’t targeted and they perceived what was happening as benefitting them and enhancing their “way of life.” The Jews were seen as a threat and they went along with the State eliminating them from them. But, after the horrors of the War and the destruction of their country when all was lost, they saw their own role and responsibility in what happened. And, they repented in shame and sorrow.
I love learning from history because it helps me better understand the day I live in. Seeing how Christians in the past reacted to their situation gives me sharper eyes for my own. And, it causes me to ask, “What if the church had been different? What opportunities did we miss? What evil could we have rejected and opposed? How were we subverted?” The 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” and the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I that created the situation that gave rise to Naziism, speak lessons that we can still learn from today. Things can go awry in a hurry. We should listen to history, especially after seeing just two weeks ago how anti-semitic violence still plagues us with the murders at the synagogue in Pittsburgh. Unless we have eyes to see what is happening around us, it can be easy to go along with the powers and principalities and get your reward in the moment. It’s hard to embrace justice, mercy, and humility and trust in God for eternity and even suffer for it in this life. But, the reward from standing with Christ and not being subverted is beyond comprehension.
(My apologies to William Thornton for the length of this post. I imagine that all those who don’t like long posts stopped reading before the end anyway). 🙂
NOTE: Much of this post was adapted from Chapter 3, “The Subversion of Christianity” in When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus. NewSouth Books (2014).
I submitted a resolution to the SBC this year in Dallas related somewhat to this issue but spelled out. I called for an apology to the Jewish people in an effort for stronger evangelistic efforts. For some reason, it never made it out of committee. Sigh.
I also mentioned the deplorable treatment given to Jacob Gartenhaus.
I met and knew Dr. Gartenhaus. Great guy.
Since you get paid by the word here ; ) , I don’t blame you for being wordy even if I still believe that you could make your points with a 1000 word piece instead of 2500 and people would read it all. But, no one is more thoughtful and thorough than you and it’s almost unfair for a commenter to lightly scan your piece and then react against it.
I take many of your points. The decade of the 1930s was not the church’s finest hour. I presume that part of your thinking here, and forgive me for trying to discern it, has to do with the strong rejection of SJ and an above-it-all attitude of The Gospel and nothing else. I’m sure immigration has something to do with it all also. I wish you would take out 1500 words and put in 100 in bullet points about where in 2018 you think we are on the cusp of Nazism. I’m thinking our system give us something more akin to Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Some, mostly Democrats and media, have been warning about incipient Nazism in the US for my entire adult lifetime. I haven’t bought the argument but maybe it drives anti-Nixon, Reagan, Bush, or Trump voters to the polls. There is no sane segment nor any significant segment of our society that isn’t attuned to anti-semitism and anti-semites. There is no party that supports it, winks at it, hints at it, or is friendly towards it.
Seems to me that the better example from the National Socialists would be Goebbels in the 1920s and the gangs of thugs and militants who would disrupt opposition party events and generally create chaos. We have a group today whose goal seems to align with that, though I don’t know that there is any broad organization to it.
Lol. Thanks for the feedback, William. I kept looking at wordcount and knew you’d have feedback. But, I write once a month and you write several times a week, so you’re still beating me. 🙂
I wrote a good bit of this in 2012 and it was published in my book in early 2014 in chapter 3. So, I wasn’t trying to make direct allusions to what happened with Nazi Germany other than to learn from it for today. Erwin Lutzer wrote a similar type of warning. If the reader sees parallels or connections to things that are happening now, that will be up to them. I’m not trying to push that view.
If I were to see anything, I am concerned about what seems to be a reemergence of ethnic identity as a determining factor in national identity as some Far Right groups in Europe and some in America want to assert. I don’t know how far they will get with that. America is moving toward a majority-minority demographic situation by 2045 or so, and the backlash to that impending reality seems to be growing. And, there are totalitarian threats from the Left that could reassert as well. None of that is equivalent to Nazi Germany in the 30s, though.
The reality, though, is that few saw Nazi Germany coming before it really flowered. People were enamored with the power of it all. Bonhoeffer saw it. Barth saw it. Some others did. They had eyes to see. The main point I’m trying to make is to ask the questions, “Do we have eyes to see? Is our theology what it should be to be able to see? Are we listening? How are we growing blind/deaf?”
In light of the 80th Anniversary or Kristallnacht and the 100th Anniversary of the end of World War 1, it seemed like a good discussion to have. My guess is that the next tyranny won’t look exactly like Nazi Germany.
Thanks for this historical post. It’s hard to believe that we would see a rise in anti-Semitism in our lifetimes, but we have. In Europe, especially. You will recall about 10 years ago there were attacks on Synagogues and Jewish businesses in 50 different cities in France. This is due, no doubt, to the passing of the WWII generation, and the influx of Muslims into Europe. Jews are leaving France in droves. It is very bad. In the U.S., too, we see a great deal of anti-Semitism on college campuses. This is due to the rising presence of Islam and more of an identification by university students with the Palestinian plight as an oppressed people vs. the Jewish state as an oppressor. We need to remember that most Jewish people and many others see any articulation of a need for all people to believe on Christ as a supreme act of anti-Semitism. I remember Al Mohler telling me about a speech he gave at an event attended, I believe, by Elie Wiesel. As Mohler articulated the basics of the Christian faith, Mr. Wiesel, was seated in the front row of the audience with his head in his hands shaking his head. The belief is that saying that Jewish people need to believe in Christ is the necessary foundation for anti-Semitism. We don’t see it that way, but we need to remember that no matter how much we try to explain it accurately, many Jews do see it that way. Some Jews do not, fortunately. Finally, I would not be too hard on our Baptist forefathers. It is awfully hard to transcend one’s culture. Baptists were no different from most Americans on this question. Roosevelt and the US Administration knew what was happening with the internment of Jews in Germany in the years preceding the War, but they chose not to act. It’s hard to blame our Democrat, New Deal loving ancestors for not transcending their history and politics to call for some different kind of domestic policy in a foreign land. It would have been good if they could have foreseen, but it is really hard. After all, even nowadays, it’s hard to know what to do in some cultures on some questions. The other thing that compounds this is the extent to which Germany, and much of Europe, was grappling with the world wide depression of those years. In… Read more »
Well put. I join Louis in these comments.
I think Alan is suggesting that a part of the Church’s calling is to “transcend one’s culture.” Is that not what Romans 12 :1-2 is about? It is hard, but that failure leads to a lack of discernment in many areas. I do believe we should try to see individuals in the context of their culture, but in order to learn how dangerous “the world” is to believers and how easily our spiritual senses may be dulled. I don’t always agree with Alan on all points, but I know I need to listen to him and constantly assess my own views from his point of reference. At 67 it is hard to resist accepting my opinions as truth unless I work at it.
Scotty,
Romans 12;1-2 isnt about the Church corporately transcending the culture but the individual. For the Church corporately does not have one mind but many and we are to individually submit to the mind of Christ that we might be together in unity, and one in that mind of Christ. Read on in chapter 12 to see that we are many members with different gifts, and each of us are to exercise them accordingly.
The Church transcends the culture by eschewing politics but not the needs of people/individuals.
Note the errors made [as we look in hindsigh] were of the fundamentalist type, external ‘sins’ were the focus instead of looking how people were being treated. The majority of Lutherans there were exploited using their fears and prejudices, which means the areas of their lives that were still tied to the earthly kingdom.
In America today, many fear immigrants because they are different. And though ilegal aliens may not pose a physical threat, they are law breakers by definition. Likewise many Christians are afraid they will lose power or privilege or may not gain power and privilege. Thus these who look to the world for ‘comfort’ are the candidates to be exploited for their fers and prejudices.
What some do to exploit these in their weaknesses is to lump classes of people together and thus condemn or exalt the whole for the some, even as the Nazis did then. Because some Jews ere greedy, all of them were. Today, because some whites are racist, then all of them are, OR because some blacks/immigrants are dangerous to society then all of them are.
Most of what Jesus did for the people were individual acts of kindness. He especially helped the cast offs of society, those that were downtrodden. Likewise we as individuals and individual congregations are to do the same. We are to treat individuals or a family as to the need they have that we can meet. We are not called as a people to exert poitical influence on ambiguous situations. Help your neighbor, whether he or she or they are an immigrant or even an ilegal alien. And share the Gospel with them as well.
When it comes right down to it, only the Gospel truly changes people and stops injustice at the root: their sin and sinfulness.
Mike it is hard to believe you confine that text to individuals. What is the Church except the collection of them? Are all the Epistles written to the individuals in the churches, but not the Church as a whole? You read the rest of the chapter and note that all use their gifts differently so that there is completion in the whole body. I think you are individualizing what should not be. Nothing said, as far as I know about any politics.
Scotty, Please exegete the passage as pertaining to the church as a whole. Consider, do you mean, when you say that the Church is the collection of them, every believer alive, or every believer alive in one city, or just every believer in one congregation. Explain in tour executing just how it works for that group you are defining as the Church . Note how we are to to corporately present our bodies as a living sacrifice, singular, since it is corporate thus not as sacrifices. Also how our singular corporate mind is transformed. Now also consider that from my point of view as we as individuals are to present our individual selves as a living sacrifice, each throwing off the conformity to the world we as individuals have to deal with. In doing so, humbling ourselves [v.3] and thus submitting ourselves to the whole, we are, as individuals, to use the gift or gifts God has given us as individuals for the edification of the Body as a whole. vs.4-8] Note further, brother, verses 9 through 13 are instructions individuals act on, again to the betterment of the whole. And in fact, the whole chapter proceeds along that very line of thinking. So yes, sir, Paul is writing to the whole, but he is giving instructions to how individulas are to act within that whole. Again, how is it I present your body as a living sacrifice? How do you present mine? Rather you present yours, and I present mine, and what does that presenting look like? Throwing off sin and sinful thinking as you and/or I live for our brethren, even as Paul goes on to outline. Butby all means, explain how these instructions work as we corporately [the local church I presume] together sacrifice ourselves as a whole and as a whole do not conform to the world. It can only happen as a Body when we as individuals are doing it as individuals. That is how a body works, Each member does its part. We don’t collectively lift the glass and the hand does not swallow nor does it do the job of the stomach. We work separately to produce the unified end result. We are not all ushers, or pianists, or children workers, or pastors. The lesson the Sunday School teacher preps for is not the same as the prep done by the one giving… Read more »
But there are two observations I will make again.
One is fact. The other is opinion.
First, the fact.
The level of expressed political hate in his country is at a real high in my lifetime. It has been going on for about 6 years. It seems that groups of various kinds have justified the expression of hate because of what they perceive to be the nature of the opposition.
This hate has certainly morphed into physical intimidation, and on occasion, violence.
This is all very reminiscent of the tension in Germany and other places in Europe between the wars.
Christians should be calling for peace, and demonstrating peace to others.
Second, the opinion.
It takes a large and powerful government to create the most harm. A small and limited government is not as capable of harm. I am pulling for continued economic freedom in this country. I hate to see the government expand, take more private resources etc. It only limits individuals further, and makes government larger and more capable of harming citizens. That’s why you have the greatest harm in modern societies in socialist and communist regimes. As things are run from the center, people’s resources have to be acquired, and people have to be ordered what to do. The bad moral value of force overcomes even good intentions. Human nature is that way.
Alan writes 2500 words on Kristallnacht. I write a few hundred on the McRib sandwich. I leave it to our readers to judge relative intellectual heft.
William Thornton, Your eloquent piece on the virtues of the McRib got me to try one for the first time. It was great, of course I must add–for the price and convenience . I would not have ever had one if you had not posted so well. I hope you do not jump off a bridge or I will too, as I am no matter ,how many time my Mother warned me, a follower. McRib was McLicious , again for the money. Best BBQ I ever had at McDonalds.
If you have intelligence and rhetorical skill, William, you can write posts of 2000 to 2500 words.
Just saying…
I’m trying to work up to lengthy, somnolent articles of 2,000, 2,500, yea 3,000+ words. It’s tough to get there in in semiretirement with all the paint drying, grass growing, and shuffleboard playing I have to do these days.
Alan Cross, a good review and a snapshot of how the Nazi took over one of the most , advanced, cultured and educated. nations in the world. One of the lessons to be learned from this period in history is how important a functioning, strong and well run constitution government based on laws is and the participation of an informed is. Due to the activity of mostly Communist “fighting” the Nazi, coupled with the effects of the war , the stupid treaty, the world wide depression and the weakness of the lawful government to quell the civic unrest from the communist and Nazi factions the average German wanted peace, jobs and a return to normal. That was the attraction of the Nazi Party who never , never won a majority in a nation wide election. My point is we have to be careful and deliberate in analyzing the who, where , why, how and when in history. Hitler solidified his power for sure when the German military swore allegiance to him personally not the German nation i.e. the people. Most Germans like most Americans were nominally Christian. Even some in the Confessing Church were only concerned about converted Jews. Complicated issue. I appreciate the good presentation , it is however just a little sliver of information into the rise of the Nazi party. We must be careful not to conflate a crazy, nut job acting alone in Philly , with the systemic , well planned, opportunistic , opportunistic , ideology driven, well financed, WW 1 veteran backed take over of a nation as the majority of its citizens were not paying attention to what was really happening. Also the writing of anti Jewish Martin Luther , On Jews and Their Lies was a part of the history of Protestant Europe. The majority of the world , not just religious groups did not realize or have any real concern about the actions of the Nazi government . This was an isolationist period of American history as well as one of preoccupation with our own national survival. FDR has to use an Executive Order to pass Lend Lease to help United Kingdom, fighting alone against the Nazi regime. We just need to be careful of comparing many things that are sinful, terrible and unjust to the Nazi regime or their absolute pure evil is lessened. The nut job in Philly has no… Read more »
I appreciate Wiliam’s and Louis’s and steve’s comments as well as the history lesson Alan gave us in the OP.
I feel like I’m watching the beginning of a Law and Order episode where they have the disclaimer that the characters in the story are not meant to portray anyone real.
Me too Bill Mac. Me too. They ought to just copy their comments and post it to every single discussion like this where Baptists are shown to have been on the wrong side of things in their thinking, certainly not taking all of scripture into account when forming their views. Steve, Mike etc. say the same basic thing in every post like this. Copy and paste would save some time.
Debbie Kaufman, Opinion based on fact is usually going to have a common, familiar thread. How about this real life example, you can ponder and perhaps answer.
Communist China , who the USA made rich and enabled their rise to prominence, is a severe grave threat to people of faith and those who disagree with their policy. They have killed more of their own people to keep power and are hostile to religion. They made abortion a national, enforced policy and work to undermine individual rights. The Catholic Church as surrendered its right to pick its own leadership in China and the government must ok their leadership decisions. Two of the Chinese Bishops are members and advocated for the Chinese Communist Part. At least America in 1930’s did not give Nazi Germany most favored nation trade status and had a 350 billion trade deficit.
What do you advocate that American Christians, especially SBC members, do to stop the Chinese Communist from killing innocent people, prosecuting religious groups. They are as bad as the Nazi were and look to take over Pacific Rim by force and economic strength. It is estimated that the Four Year Famine alone , created by the government killed millions of innocent Chinese by design. Currently the Chinese are prosecuting their Muslim population. What do you recommend as a viable action plan other than a very powerful, stern SBC resolution ?
I found this piece of history concerning the Baptists ten years ago when I was doing research for a post I was writing, I included this piece of history in my post. Nothing was mentioned about it in any of the long list of comments made. It was as if that piece did not exist. Yet it is another black eye on our denomination I think. It also leaks into those who are railing against social justice, or feeling any type of emotion, quoting scripture out of context as the Bible needs to be interpreted as a whole, and well….even Jesus wept and Paul wanted to trade places with the Jews if it meant their coming to Christ among other deep, I believe Holy Spirit driven emotions in scripture that are conveniently left out of the scripture quoting.
Amy: I am with you on this and think a resolution should have been made, needs to be made, but it also points to another period of time, and not a short period but several years, that Southern Baptists were wrong. And not just wrong, atrociously wrong, so those here who say we should give them a pass, then offer excuses as to why, are too atrociously wrong in my view.
I would encourage those who are interested to research what M. E. Dodd and Ben Barnes said after the BWA meeting in Berlin. Their words are not about reading them in a historical context but pure anti-Semitism. I would also ask you to discover what happened to Jacob Gartenhaus before, during and after WW2. He was decimated by character assassination and the SBC STILL has not truly taken back the idea of Jewish missions that they abandoned in 1948.
And, yes, Debbie Kaufman, I will resubmit the resolution in 2019.
The M.E. Dodd Statement is in the link in the original post, printed in the Tennessee Baptist state paper.
Barnes’ can be found in the Arkansas state paper from that time. I researched and found it. I wrote a paper on Gartenhaus for James Spivey at SWBTS.
Great Post! As a lover of history I always appreciate good insights from our past (tragic though it can be).
Alex: Though the names and local are changed, I don’t think this is just our tragic past but our tragic present.
Alan,
Very interesting piece and a timely reminder, especially given the rising popularity of anti-Semitism (particularly among “academics” and their activist offspring).
One of the salient points Wiesel frequently made was on how wrong it was to call the Nazi power brokers “monsters.” He reasoned that to do so was a sort of exoneration of their culpability for mass murder and to diminish the frightening capacity for dehumanizing thought and behavior present in us all.
I would add to your lesson that the seeds of Kristallnacht and the ensuing Holocaust were sown historically in the 19th Century anti-Christian philosophers popular in German thought and their amplified assertions that “God is dead.” When that thought becomes prominent (even if misunderstood), all bets are off when it comes to morality and human affairs.
James
James, I agree with you on all points 100%. When we make people who are truly evil the “other,” we miss that “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn was and is spot on. Quite biblical in his assessment of humanity and our capacity to do and turn a blind eye to evil.