The Nazi Religion and the Rise of the French Christian Resistance

The Nazi Religion and the Rise of the French Christian Resistance PDF

Author: Kathleen Burton

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1538171422

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If asked to define “Nazism,” most people think of fascism, racism, antisemitism, and the use of propaganda. Few people know that Nazism also included a strong religious component. Yet it did. The Nazi religion was termed Positive Christianity, and it is directly cited in Hitler’s Nazi Party Platform of 1920. But what was Positive Christianity? In this book, Kathleen Burton details when and where this religion was embraced; how it was received and critiqued by the prominent theologians of the 1930s; and how a combined effort of rogue Catholic priests and Protestant pastors in France, aware of the religious threat, worked together to fight Nazism during World War II. This contributed to the survival of seventy-five percent of France’s Jewish population. Burton concludes by describing what work still needs to be done to fully understand, clarify, and debunk Nazism’s Positive Christianity. Today’s world is fascinated by the tragic events of World War II, yet Hitler’s propaganda coup against traditional Christianity is not well-known or understood. This book closes that gap.

The Holy Reich

The Holy Reich PDF

Author: Richard Steigmann-Gall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-04-21

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1107393922

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Analyzing the previously unexplored religious views of the Nazi elite, Richard Steigmann-Gall argues against the consensus that Nazism as a whole was either unrelated to Christianity or actively opposed to it. He demonstrates that many participants in the Nazi movement believed that the contours of their ideology were based on a Christian understanding of Germany's ills and their cure. A program usually regarded as secular in inspiration - the creation of a racialist 'people's community' embracing antisemitism, antiliberalism and anti-Marxism - was, for these Nazis, conceived in explicitly Christian terms. His examination centers on the concept of 'positive Christianity,' a religion espoused by many members of the party leadership. He also explores the struggle the 'positive Christians' waged with the party's paganists - those who rejected Christianity in toto as foreign and corrupting - and demonstrates that this was not just a conflict over religion, but over the very meaning of Nazi ideology itself.

Before Auschwitz

Before Auschwitz PDF

Author: Paul R. Hinlicky

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2013-06-27

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1620321033

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What can Christian theology in North America learn from the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s?This book explores an explosion of scholarship in recent decades that has reopened questions once thought to be settled about the relationships between Nazism, Liberalism, and Christianity. In the process of criticizing the retrospective fallacy and urging a properly hermeneutical historiography, its method in historical theology causes us to reflect back upon our tacit commitments, suggesting that we are closer to fascism than we are aware and that, although the devil never shows its face twice in exactly the same way, the particular hubris of grasping after "final solutions" along biopolitical lines--that is, the "racially scientific" version of fascism that was Nazism--is and remains near at hand today, within our horizon of possibilities unrecognized in just the ways that it was unrecognized by Germans before Auschwitz.The book takes a fresh look at the theology of Adolf Hitler and finds themes that are disturbingly familiar. It summons to the renewal of Christian theology after Christendom in the form of critical dogmatics, where the motif of the Beloved Community replaces the fallen idol descended from Charlemagne.

Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century

Christianity and Resistance in the 20th Century PDF

Author: Soren von Dosenrode

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 9004171266

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How is the Christian supposed to act when his or her government misbehaves? Should one suffer and obey the authority, or should one render resistance; and if so, should it be passive or active; and if active, should it be violent or not? This book will not provide the answer to this question, but it will describe and analyse important persons of the 20th century who were placed in a situation where they did not merely 'turn the other cheek', but felt that they had to resist a regime; a decision which had consequences for them all. Thus the book provides insight to a central and current question of Christian and indeed religious thinking.

Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity

Confronting the Nazi War on Christianity PDF

Author: Richard Bonney

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 594

ISBN-13: 9783039119042

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Contemporaries and historians have found it difficult to interpret the ambiguous relationship between National Socialism and Christianity. Both the Catholic and Protestant Churches tended to agree with National Socialists in their authoritarianism, their attacks on socialism and communism, and their campaign against the Versailles Treaty; but the doctrinal position of the Churches could not be reconciled with the principle of racism, a foreign policy of unlimited aggressive warfare, or a domestic agenda involving the complete subservience of Church to State. Important sections of the Nazi Party sought the complete extirpation of Christianity and its substitution by a purely racial religion, but considerations of expediency made it impossible for the National Socialist leadership to adopt this radical anti-Christian stance as official policy. The Kulturkampf Newsletters, which have not appeared in English since the 1930s, were produced by German Catholic exiles in France. They scrupulously document the tensions between various strands of Nazi policy, and the nature of the policy eventually adopted: this was to reduce the Churches' influence in all areas of public life through the use of every available means, yet without provoking the difficulties - diplomatic as well as domestic - which an openly declared war of extermination might have caused.

Priests de la Resistance!

Priests de la Resistance! PDF

Author: The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 178607673X

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‘A hugely enjoyable, eccentric account of clerical heroism in the face of evil.’ Observer ‘Comedy and tragedy run side by side… Bracing and lively.’ The Times ‘An admiring study of priests and ministers who have put their lives on the line.’ BBC History Magazine Who says you can't fight fascism in a cassock? Wherever fascism has taken root, it has met with resistance. From taking a bullet for a frightened schoolgirl in Alabama to saving Greek Jews from extermination by way of fake IDs, each of the fifteen hard-drinking, chain-smoking clerics featured in this book were willing to risk their lives for what they believed.

The Aryan Jesus

The Aryan Jesus PDF

Author: Susannah Heschel

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 9780691125312

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"Based on years of archival research, The Aryan Jesus examines the membership and activities of this controversial theological organization. With headquarters in Eisenach, the Institute sponsored propaganda conferences throughout the Nazi Reich and published books defaming Judaism, including a dejudaized version of the New Testament and a catechism proclaiming Jesus as the savior of the Aryans. Institute members - professors of theology, bishops, and pastors - viewed their efforts as a vital support for Hitler's war against the Jews."--BOOK JACKET.

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

Churches and Religion in the Second World War PDF

Author: Jan Bank

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2016-03-24

Total Pages: 625

ISBN-13: 1472504801

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Despite the wealth of historical literature on the Second World War, the subject of religion and churches in occupied Europe has been undervalued – until now. This critical European history is unique in delivering a rich and detailed analysis of churches and religion during the Second World War, looking at the Christian religions of occupied Europe: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Orthodoxy. The authors engage with key themes such as relations between religious institutions and the occupying forces; religion as a key factor in national identity and resistance; theological answers to the Fascist and National Socialist ideologies, especially in terms of the persecution of the Jews; Christians as bystanders or protectors in the Holocaust; and religious life during the war. Churches and Religion in the Second World War will be of great value to students and scholars of European history, the Second World War and religion and theology.

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