Author and professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College in California, Jamaica Kincaid (a native of Antigua in Haiti), recently visited Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). In remarks made there to the media she talked about the earthquake and expressed wonder at what it had to happen for the United States to take notice of Haiti’s impoverished state.

To this an IPFW employee responded that a number of American church groups had been in Haiti for years, “trying to help.”

Jamaica Kincaid responded that “I think, on the whole, church groups should be banned from these places” because given the predominance of Voodoo the Christians visiting there are trying to spread Christianity. This is not a surprising charge, given the activities of such groups in the US, who often coerce or force the people they purport to help to accept their religion in exchange for help.

Kincaid said, “Their main reason for going there is to eradicate this belief.”

She was worried that Christians in the audience would be offended, but she had the courage to say what needed to be said, what no doubt many of us had been thinking – this writer included.

Professor Jamaica Kincaid

As it happens, the facts support Ms. Kincaid’s contention: The Guardian reports that “Christians have…been inundating radio stations asking anyone who has committed a crime to confess, thereby saving the nation from future disasters. Inspiration, an evangelical station, said 11,000 people had rung up to pledge themselves to God since the earthquake.”

A Brief History

What is happening in Haiti is another example of cultural genocide (also sometimes called “ethnocide”) – the destruction of native cultures – a process that has been taking place since the fourth century everywhere Christian missionaries set foot.

Anthropologists recognize what is taking place; missionaries are agents of cultural change. The process, without naming religions, is recognized as taking place by the United Nations in 1948: it is destruction with intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group.

Genocide is genocide, whether you destroy their culture with bullets or with Bibles.

When aid workers go into a country with a sense of missionary superiority, with as much interest in the “moral evolution of the indigenous communities” in the words of anthropologist Raymond Firth, as in providing them with their daily physical needs, all sorts of problems arise for those indigenous people (Firth 1976). As another anthropologist points out, in many regions the “wounds to peoples’ self-conceptions and to the integrity of their cultures remains deep and unhealed” (Keesing 1976).

What does the Christian god have to do with helping those in need? Or, as we will see below, helping some, and not others?

It is therefore not unreasonable to question the motives of the church group that was recently charged with kidnapping Haitian children to take across the border. What kind of saving, precisely, did they have in mind?

It is significant that the missionaries in question are from Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, which places a strong focus on Evangelization:

It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations. The new birth of man’s spirit by God’s Holy Spirit means the birth of love for others. Missionary effort on the part of all rests thus upon a spiritual necessity of the regenerate life, and is expressly and repeatedly commanded in the teachings of Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ has commanded the preaching of the gospel to all nations. It is the duty of every child of God to seek constantly to win the lost to Christ by verbal witness undergirded by a Christian lifestyle, and by other methods in harmony with the gospel of Christ.

The problem for them is that in their zeal, they forgot to ask permission. They were going to just whisk the children across the border into the Dominican Republic without asking. They were going to put them into an orphanage and you can be certain that they would be taught there to be good little Baptists, whatever form their own religion might be.

Let’s not play ignorant here: the removal of Aboriginal children from their families is an ancient tactic used by missionaries to break down cultural barriers, not only in the 19th century but in the 20th, not only in the New World but in Australia and elsewhere.

The situation is not limited to the appropriation of children but extends to relief supplies as well. The Guardian reports that “Max Beauvoir, Haiti’s “supreme master” of voodoo, alleged his faith’s opponents had deliberately prevented much-needed help from reaching followers of the religion, which blends the traditional beliefs of West African slaves with Roman Catholicism.”

His cry will seem familiar – and believable to progressive Americans: “The evangelicals are in control and they take everything for themselves,” he claimed. “They have the advantage that they control the airport where everything is stuck. They take everything they get to their own people and that’s a shame.”

Understandable behavior for people who, like Pat Robertson, think those who practice Voodoo are in thrall to Satan. But what kind of excuse is ignorance?

Does the “Great Commission” give Christian missionaries the right to trump the natural rights of others, particularly those who are at a disadvantage culturally or economically?

People talk about “Coca Cola culture” and “American cultural imperialism.” The German group Rammstein even wrote a song about it, “Amerika.” But why is nobody talking about religious imperialism?

This is a discussion which needs to take place, a debate we must have.

Anyone unfamiliar with the Joshua Project should right this moment correct that hole in their knowledge base: Joshua Project – Unreached Peoples of the World

“Joshua Project is a research initiative seeking to highlight the ethnic people groups of the world with the least followers of Jesus Christ.”

(Jamaica Kincaid’s visit to IPFW was originally reported in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, February 12, 2010)

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We have people like Glenn Beck repeatedly decrying government interference in our lives. That seems to be the mantra of the far-right these days: government interference is bad.

But not all kinds, apparently. The far-right is perfectly content to let the government impose religious beliefs on American citizens, as long as those religious beliefs are approved of by – you got it – the far right.

A case in point is abortion. The central platform of the GOP in the 2008 election cycle was abortion. That makes for a pretty small tent and it’s no surprise they lost as a result (At this year’s CPAC abortion ranked #5 on the list of attendee concerns).

But what is anti-abortion legislation if it is not government interference in the private reproductive rights of an individual? And 80% of those polled at CPAC said that government “intrusion into their lives of its citizens” was their main concern.

But is it? Really?

The government says, in effect: you get pregnant, you keep your baby – even if it kills you. Even if you were raped. Even if you were a victim of incest. Even if you were too young to sign a binding legal document – a contract – when you got pregnant, you’re old enough to agree to keep the baby.

The anti-abortion movement – which finds most of its supporters to right of the aisle – doesn’t seem to have a problem with some kinds of government interference.

That kind of government interference is welcomed. The irony is that while they’re arming themselves (quite literally) to resist every other kind of government interference in their lives, they’re also arming themselves to force you to obey the government when it tells you to have that baby.

In Utah, the situation is even more absurd. According to legislation that is awaiting the governor’s signature, you can go to jail for having a miscarriage.

Yes, the government can now decide that you fell down those stairs intentionally – in order to trigger a miscarriage.

Think I’m joking? Ask the pregnant woman in Iowa who fell down the stairs and was arrested. Yes. She not only had to suffer possible injury (not to mention fear for her baby’s life) but she had to suffer the humiliation of the government coming into her home and telling her what her intentions were.

Isn’t that what Glenn Beck and his ultra-right friends pretend to be against?

Why aren’t they defending this woman?

Iowa is not the only state with such laws (There are 37 states with a feticide law on the books). The anti-abortion movement, driven by religious extremists, has done just what the right-wing fears and insinuated the government into our homes, or in Glenn Beck’s words, tracking of “everything you do” (February 22 broadcast of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program). Including, obviously, falling down the stairs while you’re pregnant.

Yes, my fellow citizens: Accidents are now crimes.

Let’s not pretend ignorance here: the so-called pro-life movement is not pro-life. It is anti-life. It is against women’s reproductive rights, it is against the life of the mother if complications threaten her survival, and it is against the life of underage girls who are pregnant due to incest, or the life of any woman who is the victim of rape.

Apparently, however the sperm got there, God wants you to be pregnant.

Your life is meaningless if you’re a woman.

The sperm gets treated like baby Jesus.

Christine Taylor in Iowa eventually walked away from both her fall and from jail, but not because the law was recognized to be wrong, but because she turned out to be not in her criminal third trimester but in her second.

In other words, she walked on a technicality. There was no admission that falling down the stairs was not in fact an attempt to murder the fetus.

Because in right-wing America, after all, you’re guilty until you’re proven innocent.

For anti-choice fanatics – and they are fanatics – women are the enemy. Women and their bodies. It is hard not to see misogyny at the root of this war against women’s reproductive rights. And incidents like these quite clearly expose the hypocrisy of the right’s position that government interference is bad.

It isn’t bad. It’s good when the government is acting on the right’s behalf.

Government interference is only bad when it’s the “cancer of progressivism” – in other words, the embrace of individual human rights as a result of the European Enlightenment – which guides the government’s hand.

In the end, the only right people like Beck are fighting for is the right to decide who gets rights – and who doesn’t.

Editor’s Note: Please follow this author on Twitter.

Glenn Beck is infamous for putting his ignorance, his intolerance, bigotry and general cluelessness on display for the world to see. But some things that come out of his mouth are less…shall we say…well thought out than others?

On February 4, on his radio talk show, this came out of his mouth:

He chose to use his name, Barack, for a reason. To identify, not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is — really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.

It seems to escape Glenn Beck’s notice that every name is an ethnic name. Including “Glenn.” Yes, his own name is Irish, Gaelic (a variant of Glen). It is difficult to see how an ethnic name from Africa is less American than an ethnic name from Ireland – or anywhere else.

And what is an “American” name, Gaelic Glenn? America is a melting pot, inhabited by people from every corner of the earth. How can one name possibly be more “American” than another?

Oh, that’s right…this is all part of the old “constructed other” routine, sowing fear: He is not one of us. He is one of them. We are back to Sarah Palin’s “real Americans” and as we all know, “real” Americans don’t come from Africa, right Glenn?

I mean, America is for the old Anglo-Saxon Protestant white person, right?

So if your name isn’t Tom, Dick, or Harry, you’re apparently one of “them” out to destroy American values and America itself. Can’t trust anyone named Barack and Mustafa is right out!

It’s really difficult at times to grasp that Glenn Beck says some of the things he says (to say nothing of Hannity, Coulter, and Limbaugh) but he does say them and we cannot pretend he does not, however simpler (and pleasanter) it would make the world.

While this sort of unreasoning hate is out there, being spouted, being aired, and listened to by an audience that does not even blink at the absurdity of it, let alone show outrage, we have to note it and speak out against it.

The only thing un-American about this whole thing is Beck himself. He has no respect for the cultural diversity that made this nation great. By his own logic, his ancestors should have stayed put; they didn’t belong here.

But it is precisely those people who chose to make America their home who have made it great. The Revolutionary War was not fought by Americans; even the “native” colonists (I use that term advisedly) did not share an equal burden in the struggle, which was born more by the Irish than any other ethnic group. Without the Irish immigrants, who would have made up the rank and file of the Continental army and the militias? Not those Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

The lesson of the Civil War is the same: again, immigrants made up much of the Union army. Germans, Norwegians and Swedes (like my own ancestors), and again, Irishmen and Scots and others. The same goes for the frontier army of the 19th century.

So when Glenn sticks his foot in his mouth like this, and manages to look even more grotesquely ignorant and intolerant than is his wont, we should take advantage of the opportunity to educate those people out there who might believe such nonsense.

It’s not true.

So much for the lesson of history. The lesson of today is that if there is one group of people in the world you do not want to trust to tell you the sky is blue, it is Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, and all the others on the far right-wing who have manufactured a mythical America to turn to. They don’t like how things turned out, so they’re just going to pretend like none of it ever happened. The past isn’t what it should be, so they’ll write a new one and mold our nation’s future to match it.

We can’t let that happen. Not on our watch.

Editor’s Note: Please follow this author on Twitter.

Introduction

The rebirth of progressivism in the United States in the early 21^st century calls for an inquiry into the subject of progressive politics. We have to ask, those of us who adopt the mantle of progressivism today: what are we talking about when we speak of ourselves as progressives? Americans of the early 21^st century have no experience of an organized “progressive party” and it cannot escape our notice that progressives not only do not have a party of their own; they have no central organization[1]

The Twentieth century has been identified by historians as the “Progressive Era.” Howard Reiter says of the rise of progressivism that “in the early decades of the twentieth century, for the first time in American history, a movement based on a broad agenda of political reform arose to dominate the political discourse.” This movement, he relates, “inspired the growth of the regulatory state, the doubling of the size of the electorate” and “many reforms that were aimed at weakening the grip of machine politics.”[2]

The origins of the movement and the causes of its coalescence are somewhat murky, though its roots go back to the 1880s and what was seen as an increasing need for social justice.[3] The term “progressive” only came into vogue in 1910 and was, said Woodrow Wilson in 1911, a “new term.” Identification of progressivism as a movement dates from 1912.[4]

Is progressivism a movement? It certainly seemed so to progressives of the early 20^th century, and they wrote about it as such.[5] But it cannot be denied, as Robyn Muncy points out, “progressivism was not a single movement but a collection of coalitions agitating for changes that often seemed to contradict each other.”[6]

In the 1970s, “Peter Filene attacked the whole notion of a coherent progressive movement as a semantic and conceptual muddle, and declared it dead and buried,” and Rodgers tells us that “By the mid 1970s, many undergraduates were being warned at the outset that they would find the Progressive era confusing.’ ‘The concept of progressivism turns out to be curiously elusive,’ they were cautioned.”[7]

This led, Rodgers says, to a” pluralistic reading of progressive politics.” Historians of this school asserted that the “progressive movement” was not, “in the strict sense of the term, a ‘movement’ at all.” It was pointed out that historically identified progressives “shared no common party or organization. They were rent by deep disagreements over anti-trust policy, women’s suffrage, direct democracy, and any number of other specific issues.”[8]

When viewed historically, progressivism seems nebulous enough then that it is not a surprise when Reiter points out that “it is almost impossible to find a significant party leader who has not been considered progressive by at least one historian.”[9] Indeed, recently, extreme Right-wing pundit Glenn Beck made the following statement: “George W. Bush was a progressive. He was a Republican. John McCain is a bigger progressive. He was a Republican.” Yes, apparently you can be far enough to the right for this to seem true.

Where in the Political Landscape?

Are progressives idealists? Is it a case of dreaming after possibilities that cannot exist in the real world or a belief that these goals can be achieved? If an ideology is a set of principles which form the basis of a political theory (that theory here being the betterment of society) can such a thing as progressive ideology be said to exist?

The historical experience of progressive politics in America shows progressivism to stand outside the two-party paradigm. Progressivism is identical with neither liberalism nor conservatism; it has been said to be too pragmatic a concept to wed itself to “any one ideology.”[10] John Halpin, senior advisor on the staff of the Center for American Progress, asserts: “Progressivism is an orientation towards politics. It’s not a long-standing ideology like liberalism, but an historically-grounded concept… that accepts the world as dynamic.”[11]

Rodgers also takes note of this ideological aspect, observing that “The deeper problem stems from the attempt to capture the progressives within a static ideological frame.” Progressivism is not a coherent ideology.[12] And progress is not static. While progressives may see themselves as idealists, they have traditionally been, as John E. Miller says of the Wisconsin progressives, “practical idealists.”[13]

The question of, in historical terms, who defines the progressive base, is problematic. There is first of all a tendency to see the American political landscape in black and white terms, divided between liberals and conservatives. The situation is, of course, far more complex than this. Support for the above-cited positions might come from anywhere.

Progressivism and Liberalism – Partners?

Wherever it has previously found a home on the American political landscape, progressivism has, more recently, come to be closely associated with liberalism, itself an increasingly problematic term. How much of this perception is subjective, based on the center-right bias of the media (and this media is owned and controlled by the ultra-wealthy who are the natural enemy of progressivism) and how much is real and objective, given the GOP’s absolute rejection of anything smelling of pragmatism, let alone progressivism’s central progressive tenet – social justice, is open to debate.

This is dangerous territory, as Rodgers reminds us: “Social justice”…a powerful Rooseveltian slogan in 1912 which, in the absence of anyone willing to defend “social injustice,” worked its magic in large part through its half-buried innuendoes and its expansive indistinctness.[14] That objection, however, becomes less meaningful now that there is a group willing to defend social injustice – the Republican Party.

Faulkner offers the traditional liberal view of the Progressive Era: “To many thoughtful men in the opening years of the twentieth century it seemed that America in making her fortune was in peril of losing her soul.”[15] Charles and Mary Beard believed that “America in the Gilded Age was being plundered by rich capitalists who, through their hold over the economy and corrupt control of the government, exploited farmers and urban workers.” Progressivism was then, a “revolutionary” change, one which “the Beards compared favorably to the French Revolution.”[16]

This is a scenario which resonates with liberals today – the rich capitalists being the purse strings of the GOP, again engaging in exploitation by denying an honest wage to workers while endorsing extensive tax breaks for themselves. It is easy enough to draw parallels: for the Founding Fathers, the villains were the monarchs and hereditary distinctions.

Again, progressives in America are seeing a need for revolution and for the same reasons. The Obama revolution has faltered, the call for change soured, and progressive disgust with the status quo in Washington is manifesting itself in myriad ways on the leftward spectrum of the American political landscape. If Filene found progressivism dead in the 70s, it is certainly alive today.

For conservatives, on the other hand, the combating of social ills and injustices has become “social engineering.” Progressivism has ceased to exist in the GOP because progressivism’s core tenets have been ruthlessly expunged in the interest of ideological purity. Anything that forces change is an evil to be avoided. What they forget – or deliberately ignore – is that social justice was of prime concern to the Founding Fathers’ egalitarian: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The Democratic party has a bigger tent; it is home to a wide range of viewpoints, especially with regards some of the central issues of the first decade of the new millennium – war, taxes, role and size of government, and social justice, especially as regards gay/lesbian rights, immigration, feminism (historically women’s suffrage is a major progressive cause),[17] healthcare reform, and reproductive rights. It is therefore more likely that Democrats – or disillusioned former moderate Republicans – will migrate to any new progressive movement. [18]

Conclusions

One thing is clear: While some stances have changed, the central message of progressivism – social reform – has not. The status quo, the position supported by conservatism both historically and today,[19] seems all out of sorts with progressivism, leaving progressivism the property of liberals frustrated with the compromise and outright obstruction of change. The GOP represents inertia; the Democratic Party compromise to the point of accomplishing nothing. Social change if it is to take place is in the hands of the progressively-minded.

Whether or not a new progressive party will take shape, drawing progressives away from their current alignment, remains to be seen. As Thelen points out, “The basic riddle in progressivism is not what drove groups apart, but what made them seek common cause.”[20] What is clear is that at this point in history, progressivism has more in common with liberalism than with conservatism, and that progressive liberals are increasingly disenchanted not only by eight years of the Bush administration but by the fading promise of Obama’s progressive platform. One thing every progressive needs to remain aware of is that our movement is no more pristine than any other political movement; progressivism has had its share of cult of personality, self-interest, manipulation of facts and graft. To what extent our work will shape or be shaped by the historical platforms and language of progressivism remains to be seen.

Editor’s Note: Please follow Hrafnkell Haraldson on Twitter, and read this author’s archive on News Junkie Post.

[2] Howard L. Reiter, “The Bases of Progressivism within the Major Parties: Evidence from the National Conventions,”

Social Science History 22 (1998), 83-116.

[3] David P. Thelen, “Social Tensions and the Origins of Progressivism,” The Journal of American History 56 (1969), 323-341.

[4] Rodgers (1982), 127 n1.

[5] See Benjamin Parke De Witt, The Progressive Movement: A Non-Partisan Comprehensive Discussion of Current Tendencies in American Politics (Macmillan, 1915). Digitized version at Amazon.com

[6] Robyn Muncy, “Women in the Progressive Era,” National Park Service http://www.nps.gov/nr//travel/pwwmh/prog.htm

[7] Rodgers (1982), 113, .citing Peter G. Filene, “An Obituary for ‘The Progressive Movement’,” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 20-34.

[8] Rodgers (1982), 114.

[9] Reiter (1998), 84.

[10] Garib (2005).

[11] What is Progressivism? Andrew Garib, July 25, 2005.

[12] Rodgers (1982), 123.

[13] Miller, (2004), 17.

[14] Rodgers (1982), 122.

[15] Anderson (1973), 427, citing Faulkner, The Quest for Social Justice, 81.

[16] Anderson (1973), 428, citing Charles A. and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (2 vols., New York, 1927). 2:543.

[17] On women’s suffrage, Reiter (1998), 94.

[18] Miller (2004), 24. By contrast, when the Wisconsin Progressive Party finally called it quits in 1946, most of its leaders went back to the Republican Party.

[19] William Safire, Safire’s Political Dictionary (Oxford, 1993), 144.

[20] Thelen (1969), 341.

Gott mit uns Nazi belt buckle

The extent to which the American Republican Party of 2010 is following in the footsteps of National Socialism is much debated. Naomi Wolf’s The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot offers us “Fascist America in 10 easy steps.” Without mentioning Christianity specifically, Wolf outlines in frightening detail what happened in Germany of the 1930s and shows how it could happen here. She bases her outline on events which took place during the presidency of George W. Bush, the man the Religious Right identified as “God’s chosen” – a return to the old Christian ideal of rule by divine right.

Both Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush (and now the post-Bush Republican Party) enjoyed the ardent – one might say fanatical – support of conservative Christians. I have argued elsewhere (Back to the 30′s: National Socialist and Republican Discourse) that these similarities are not superficial, but can be identified at the heart of the discourse and rhetoric employed by each movement. I touched in passing there National Socialism’s relationship with Christianity – my focus was more political – but here I will examine the religious aspects.

There is no real contradiction in calling Germany a Christian Nation while denying that epithet to America. The Old World had a long history of state religions – exactly what our 18^th century Evangelicals and our Founding Fathers were trying to avoid in the New World – and it was that reality that drove the Founding Fathers to draft the First Amendment, thus freeing the new nation from that evil:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Before the Reformation, Europe was composed of kingdoms, duchies, principalities and so forth, all of them boasting Christianity as their state religion. In 1530 many German states declared their new state religion to be Protestant. Many of the first settlers in North America were fleeing religious wars and religious persecution that arose in this era. I have ancestors on my father’s side who were French Huguenots, fleeing Catholic persecution in France in the 17^th century.

The people coming to these shores did not want state religion, or state interference in their religion. They did not want to be told how to worship or what to believe. But that is entirely contrary to the European experience.

In 1910 Richard Lempp noted that every German was by birth a member of the Church of his or her state – either Protestant or Catholic – just as he or she was a citizen of a state and each of the 26 German states had its own established Church. This has never been true of the United States, and we have the First Amendment to thank for this.

There are no state religions in American states or in the United States as a whole. The professors of theological faculties were appointed by the governments of the German states, not by the Church. German churches were state churches. When a child went to school, he received 2-12 hours of religious instruction each week all the way through the end of high school.

They were taught Christian theology, church history and ethics and during the last two years of one’s education the teaching was done by pastors, not by school teachers. Participation in state religion became voluntary only upon graduation.[1] This is what I mean when I say that Germany was a “Christian Nation.” This was the situation up until 1918. It must be remembered that the National Socialist hierarchy was a product of this pre-1918 era, as were many of the men of military age when war came in 1939 (when the class of 1918 would have been 21).

A church full of Nazis

And Hitler himself disapproved of secular schools. On April 26, 1933, during negotiations leading to the Nazi-Vatican Concordant, he said: “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith …we need believing people.”

We have seen the degree to which modern Republican discourse agrees with Hitler’s summation. Morality, we are told, is impossible outside of a Christian context; secular schools cannot be trusted to properly indoctrinate our children.

Richard Lempp updated his study of German religion in 1921, post-Versailles Treaty, and spoke of the revolution of 1918, which had the effect of shattering the relationship between Church and State. Lempp saw as the cause of this separation the Socialists, who in 1891 in the Socialist Programme of Erfurt, had declared that religion was a private matter.

After the end of the Great War, “the ministry of public worship and education, which before the revolution had charge of the churches, now came into the hands of men who belonged to no church…in the most important state, Prussia, the “Kultusminister” was the well-known Adolf Hoffmann, a Berlin bookseller who for years had opposed both religion and the churches with malice and contempt,” says Mr. Lempp. “He began by prohibiting prayer in the Prussian schools and proclaiming the abolition of all religious instruction.” Religious instruction was also abolished in Saxony, Gotha, Brunswick and Hamburg without appeal to special legislation.

You can see at this point both the beginnings of an understanding of Church and State relations that would be recognizable to Americans and also the hostility with which this break is greeted by Mr. Lempp, himself a German Christian. But we are also told of the strength of Christian belief in the new Germany; in the Rhineland, Catholics threatened to secede if “irreligious radicals continued to dominate the government” and “In northern Germany alone seven million Protestants signed a protest against the abolition of religious instruction in schools.”

Again, this situation will seem familiar to readers today. There is talk of secession and it is in part due to conservative Christian feeling. Until recently, this is a situation you can never imagine having occurred in the United States with its long tradition of separation of Church and State.

In 1919, therefore, the American concept of separation of Church and State was rejected by German voters – just as it is being rejected by conservative Christian voters in the United States. “Rather it was universally demanded that the church, although now independent of the state, remain “Volkskirche,” a national church” with the result that religion continued to be taught in the schools.[2] The Germany that greeted the rise of National Socialism was still a Christian nation. The only real difference in 1919 was that the church was no longer state-sponsored, but the states paid the churches an annual annuity in its place, so the change was cosmetic only.

Nazi Christmas tree ornaments

It is clear that Germany both before and after 1919 was overwhelmingly Christian and remained so into Hitler’s Third Reich. The people in charge had grown up in a Christian Germany and the people who followed their leaders had grown up either in the same period or in the early to mid-20s. It was both Protestants and Catholics who voted the National Socialists into power, not Pagans, not feminists, not homosexuals, not secular-minded socialists, not the despised atheistic communists. Those groups all ended up in concentration camps along with the Jews and Gypsies.

What Hitler did was simply a continuation of the Christian-sponsored anti-Jewish pogroms of the Middle Ages and later. Yet: another slander Christians lay at Paganism’s doorstep is equating Nazism with a Pagan revival. Perhaps the best witness we can call to the stand against this claim is Hitler himself, who stated in no uncertain terms,

It seems to me that nothing would be more foolish than to re-establish the worship of Wotan. Our old mythology had ceased to be viable when Christianity implanted itself. Nothing dies unless it is moribund.[3]

Compare and contrast with:

“The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul; they’re inspired by the best religious spirit, and the Churches here support themselves on a solid foundation.”[4]

While Hitler shoveled dirt on Paganism’s grave, he stated in Mein Kampf that he drew his inspiration for a zero-tolerance policy on competing worldviews directly from the history of Christianity, not, significantly, from the tolerance of Pagan societies.[5]

When Hitler spoke of the “Christian spirit” imbued in German culture, he was quite – and very deadly – serious.[6]

Both Protestant and Catholic Churches cooperated with the Nazi government, including the Papacy. Significantly, the groups mentioned above, did not. They opposed Hitler tooth and nail; conservative Christians welcomed him with open arms. It is not too much to call their support “messianic” in fervor. Whatever Hitler’s official religious stance – Hitler’s professed policy was to “let it wither on the vine.”[7] – National Socialist policies did nothing to destroy the Church and Christian support for the Nazi regime never wavered.

Given his belief in “providence” Hitler comes across privately someone who accepts the reality of God (a God who chose him to lead Germany just as God chose Bush to lead America) but rejects the attached Christian theology. Yet it cannot be forgotten that he himself never left the Catholic Church and retained cordial relations with the Vatican during the war.[8] For their part, the Protestants and Catholics both supported the Third Reich – a support that was unwavering.[9] And in the end, it is less important what Hitler thought than the overwhelming and enthusiastic support his programs received from Christians.

Goring's church wedding: Hitler as best man while Reichbishop Müller presides

During the National Socialist Era, some two-thirds of Germans were Protestant and the rest, Catholic. There were no discernible numbers of Pagans, and those few that existed were, as noted above thrown into concentration camps along with the Jews, political prisoners, gypsies and other “undesirables.” The Third Reich was, as the facts amply demonstrate, a conservative Christian undertaking.

To blame Hitler on the Left, to conjure up images of a Left-wing secular-atheist Hitler today (Mr. Obama or otherwise) is not only the height of hypocrisy but it is in complete contradiction of the historical record.

Yet from the Nazi Era on, we have been told by Christians that the Nazis were Heathens or Neo-Pagans, despite Hitler’s clear words to the contrary, and despite the fact that the population of Germany, excepting the Jews, was entirely and overwhelmingly Christian. The use of Heathen sacred symbols does not make Nazism Heathen, as even the Anti-Defamation League recognizes.[10]

The men and women who committed atrocities were themselves overwhelmingly Christians, or had been brought up as Christians, as indeed Hitler himself had been. Nazi racism and Antisemitism was dependent upon a long history of Christian Antisemitism, an attitude dating far back into Christianity’s past and continued by Martin Luther. Without Christianity, Nazism would be unimaginable.[11]

Similarly, without Christianity, today’s GOP would be impossible, a political party dedicated not to a social platform but to a narrow and restrictive view of what is right and wrong. The only striking difference seems to be that it was the Nazis who co-opted the Christianity that had birthed it, while today it is Christianity that has co-opted the GOP. In either case the aspirations of conservative Christians find a voice in the political arena.

Given America’s religio-political landscape (two terms that should not come into contact)  there is no reason to suppose that Sinclair Lewis was wrong when he said, “when fascism comes to America, it will be draped in the flag and carrying a cross.” After all, when fascism came to Germany, it was identically clothed.

Citations:

[1] Richard Lempp “Present Religious Conditions in Germany,” The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 3, No. 1. (Jan., 1910), pp. 85-124.  From 1914-1918 Lempp was a chaplain in the German 26^th Reserve Division serving in France and Belgium and after 1919 became secretary of the Evangelischer Volksbund für Württemberg

[2] Richard Lempp “Church and Religion in Germany,” The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 14, No. 1. (Jan., 1921), pp. 30-52.

[3] Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944 Trans. By Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens, Hugh Trevor Roper, ed. NY: Enigma Books, 2000 [1953], 61, conversation of  14 October 1941.

[4] Ibid, 85, conversation of 24 October 1941, p. 85.

[5] Werner Ustorf, ‘Survival of the Fittest’: German Protestant Missions, Nazism and Neocolonialism, 1933-1945? Journal of Religion in Africa 28 (1998), 94. Ustorf argues that leading German mission thinkers even saw in National Socialism an opportunity to reverse the marginalization of Christianity and the influence of liberals, Jews, agnostics and others and re-Christianize Europe.

[6] Adolf Hitler, quoted in: The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1 (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), 871-872.

[7] Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s Table Talk, 341-344, conversation of 27 February 1942.

[8] Hitler told General Gerhart Engel in 1941: “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.” He was a tithe paying Catholic till the day he died, was baptized a Roman Catholic, was an altar boy, and was never excommunicated.

[9] James E. Gilman, “R.G. Collingwood and the Religious Sources of Nazism” Journal of the Academy of Religion, 54 (1986), 125-126. “Ecclesiastical complicity with the National Socialists is well documented and familiar.” See also Robert P. Ericksen, Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust(Augsburg Fortress 1999).

[10] For those interested in the appropriation of Heathen symbols by the Nazis see the Anti-Defamation website page, A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos where proper identification of these symbols is made.

[11] Interestingly, one contemporary Christian assessment of Christianity and National Socialism asserted that “National Socialism cannot be understood unless it is seen ‘as a New Islam, its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s prophet.’”  See Wilhelm Pauck, “National Socialism and Christianity: Can they be Reconciled?” The Journal of Religion 20 (1940), 15-32. Here too the basic problem of Nazism’s Christian underpinnings is ignored.