“WE REJECT THE FALSE DOCTRINE”: HOW THE CONFESSING CHURCH INFORMS THEOLOGICAL RESISTANCE TO CHRISTIAN FASCISM
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the twentieth-century pastor, theologian, conspirer against Nazi Germany, and martyr, has been admired since his death by Christians of various traditions. Eric Metaxas’s popular (though poorly-regarded-academically) biography of Bonhoeffer and the recent film based on it have especially succeeded in reinvigorating his legacy among evangelicals. Over the last several years, Metaxas has also repeatedly attempted to invoke Bonhoeffer and the events of World War II in support of Donald Trump and to warn against what he perceives to be the Nazi-like dangers of contemporary leftism.
Now, Bonhoeffer’s attempts to construe Bonhoeffer’s resistance to Nazism as analogous to conservative evangelical opposition to progressivism has been roundly criticized by both Bonhoeffer scholars and Bonhoeffer’s own descendants. But Metaxas is right that a comparison of Bonhoeffer’s broader ecclesiastical and political context with our own has the potential to be tremendously illuminating—if not perhaps in the way that he thinks. In fact, taking a look at the 1930s debates between the Confessing Church and the pro-Nazi German Christians, however, reveals several illuminating historic parallels to the current debates on Christian nationalism or Christian fascism.
IN PHARAOH’S COURT
The Nile winds through fields of green,
a slow-moving mirror for the sky.
Papyrus sways, reaching against the current,
while beyond the banks, stone rises—
temples, palaces, the weight of rule
pressed into the land like a seal.
HITLER’S THEOLOGIANS, PT. 2
The second of a two-part article. The idea of loyalty to one man was used by Lutherans who harkened back to their founder’s stance against the Peasant Revolt of the 1520’s by evoking the Pauline claim to respect authority and the leader. This was also remembered as having occurred in history when the Roman emperors, once the great “anti-Christs” or persecutors, became hailed as protectors of the faith. In Germany the idea was focused on the relationship between the Holy Roman Emperor as the chief political entity and the Pope as the main religious official in Western Europe. Here again the old pre-Enlightenment idea of divine right of kings came into play as the rulers were men of God chosen to shepherd the German people. With the collapse of the Second Reich in 1918, the democratic Weimar Republic took effect. Many theologians criticized this democratic government’s replacing the monarchy than Germany had been familiar with for centuries if not millennia. Lutheran theologian Paul Althaus saw the Weimar regime as only a temporary institution before a greater, yet-to-come government created by Germans for Germans.¹ Fr. Phillipp Haueser detested the regime, leading to his involvement with the Nazi Party. Many theologians found their idea of a new monarch in Adolf Hitler. Albus Schlachlieter saw himself as John the Baptist for Hitler’s rise to power.² Haueser also echoed that idea. Paul Althaus saw Hitler as a “pious and faithful sovereign” and National Socialism as “a government with discipline and honor.” Emanuel Hirsch also saw Hitler in such terms as a Heaven-sent Christian leader. Hitler was seen as akin to the old Emperors of the First Reich who upheld Christian values of the German people. Hitler was not only the political leader of a new Germany but also a spiritual leader, seen as sent by God to reignite the Christian soul of the German people.