A Sobering Read About the Dangers of a Church Subsumed to the State.

Down at the University Library this morning, reading, browsing, and thinking. This book is a sobering read for those who ever think Christian Nationalism is a valid form of Christian existence.

The parallels are clear between what happened in Germany in the 1930s and what is taking place in some forms of so-called evangelicalism embedding itself in the machinery of State power. What happened then was the reduction of the German church to the will of the State, the neutering of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the collaboration of religious authorities with the values, policies and actions of the Nazi party, in exchange for protection and power.

Out of the threat of such dangerous compromise and, let's use the word, apostasy, came the Confessing Church. These were people and communities of faith who refused to toe the party line, who rejected the Aryan paragraph, and who formulated the Barmen Declaration.

Many of these courageous witnesses were persecuted, imprisoned or martyred for their adherence to the teaching and final authority of the teaching, person and truth of Jesus Christ. They knew, to the depth of their souls, that Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, not Hitler, and not any other who claims and is given the adulation of those who claim uncritical allegiance over their lives, their values and final loyalty.

Just to be clear. This is a book of original documents, showing what was actually written by those who fully supported the church being co-opted into the Nazi propaganda machine. There are huge resources of historical and theological scholarship conducted over the last 80 years analysing the how and the why of the State church capitulation to Hitler. The evidence of how and why is in documents like these. And with that evidence the most severe of warnings that such capitulation can become a reality in any age given the right circumstances of discontent, grievance, scape-goating of others, and a church desperate for secular approval and cultural status.

Note the photograph on the book cover, with the swastika as the central panel, dominating the cross. The official banner of the German Church