DISCERNING THE DREAM
“After the attempt on the life of the Führer, the German Protestant Church Chancellery and the Spiritual Council of the German Protestant Church expressed their gratitude to God for his gracious protection in telegrams of loyalty to the Führer.”[1] So said the Declaration of Loyalty by the German Protestant Church following the attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life during the famous plot of July 20th.
This plot on the Fuhrer’s life was organized by a group of military officers of the Wehrmacht, the German Army, and was made more famous to Americans after the fictionalized account Valkyrie starring Tom Cruise hit the theaters. The story is thrilling enough for a blockbuster to be sure, with the brave Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and his confederates placing a bomb under Hitler’s planning table at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia. The bomb successfully detonated, killing four, injuring twenty, including Adolf Hitler who survived the attempt.
Adolf Hitler attributed his survival to God’s providence, that he was “an agent of destiny” for Germany. Surely this was providence that the Übermensch would crush the enemies of the Reich, the divine right of the Aryan to rule over the Slav and Jew was clear enough for Hitler and the German State after this brush with destiny.
The unnatural syncretism between Nazism’s heathen nationalism and the learned and cultured German protestant religion was complete in the statement from the German Protestant Church. The veneer of revelation and providence lacquered upon the Austrian corporal, the amen of the baptized ringing in Teutonic naves in unison with “Sieg Heil!”
On July 13, 2024 near Butler, Pennsylvania, a disturbed young man was able to find a firing position on a roof near where the then-former-president was holding a rally. As President Trump was presenting on immigration, gunfire cracked, he touched his bloodied ear and ducked. A bystander was killed and three others hit by gunfire including the President. The would-be-assassin was shot and killed. President Trump stood defiantly with his fist held high and yelled “fight, fight, fight!” to the stunned crowd.
The wickedness of political violence is worth a separate discussion; however, let us pay attention to what was said in the days following by President Trump and his allies. At the Republican National Convention held just a few days after the assassination attempt, Trump attributed his survival to the hand of God. From the far right and Christian Nationalists, this was echoed, the brush with death was a sure sign of the hand of providence, and Donald Trump was a revelatory sign of divine blessing. The amen of our brothers and sisters joined once again to the new paganism of the nation-state.
I don’t mean to conflate Nazism and Trumpist Nationalism as a pair in perfect symmetry; they are not. But scratching below the surface to first principles: nationalism, populism, ethnic identity, oppression of other ideas, and arguably racialism, we see some shared notes.
Revelation, whether individual or corporate, is always a fraught area for the Christian Church. While we should have a certainty in the Holy Scriptures, that they are revelation from God, and a surety in the fullness of revelation that is in Jesus Christ, who reveals the fullness of the Father, everything else is somewhat “suspect.” A suspicion of revelation in these latter-days is well earned; from Hitler, to the Crusades, to the Inquisition, the Church has not batted a thousand as it concerns discerning revelation.
Karl Barth provides some help as it concerns discernment and prophetic utterances. Where there is true proclamation, true prophecy, it involves the phenomenon of the incarnation. Or as Barth puts it:
Real proclamation, therefore, is the Word of God preached, and in this... the Word of God preached means human talk about God which by God’s own judgment, that cannot be anticipated and never passes under our control, is true with reference both to the proclaimed object and also to the proclaiming subject, so that it is talk which has to be listed to and which rightly demands obedience.[2]
What Barth is saying is elementary and tautological; religious utterances are true if they are true. If they pass God’s judgment, if they are true when held up against the testimony of Jesus Christ as revealed in the scriptures. And only thus, only when vetted, only when measured against the Truth that is Jesus, do we owe it obedience or belief. While the far-right is not unique in its use of revelatory or providential language towards ideological ends, I do think that is the most sinister.
While critiques can of course be made against the Social Gospel or the Christian Left for a misuse of biblical concepts, I think the ultimate judgement is a phenomenological question. The Christian Left have misused biblical concepts and there have been negative effects to be sure, an erosion of the supernatural in favor of a crass and barren “christian ethic.” However, the unique insidiousness of the far-right’s revelatory anti-Gospel shows itself to be in the territory of Antichrist in its plain opposition to Christian ethics and Christian political theology.
Thoughtful Christians of good will can disagree on the nature of the person, can disagree on what constitutes sin, we have been having those conversations for centuries, we cannot disagree on who is a person. This is just an example of course, I could cite the racialized fear mongering around immigration, the deconstruction of our social safety net for the perishing poor, the egregious misappropriation of the concept of Ordo Amoris. The misappropriation of revelation and providence by the far-right and Christian Nationalists provide a veneer of biblicism to wantonly wicked acts. A right distinction between heterodoxies, more insidious or less insidious, is a phenomenological distinction.
Hitler’s claim of providence—his claim to be under the protection of the Almighty God—so that he can effectuate this divine plan for his sacred Germany was a false utterance. We can say with definition that it was false, because held against the testimony of Jesus in the scriptures, it shows itself as false. It is false because it is false. The President’s claim of providence, his claim to be under the protection of the Holy Spirit so that he can effectuate his war against the foreigner, the orphan, the widow, the poorest among us is false. It is false because the scriptures testify against any such plan. God works his wrath against those who plot against the poor. The claim is false because it is false. A tautology for sure, but most good theologies start from such tautologies.
My worry is that these Trumpian claims have shown themselves to be effective, to be convincing, with the results of our last election evidence enough. While some of our brothers and sisters in the far-right have seen the falsehood and rejected it, many others remain in the “Dream” of Nationalism as Karl Barth put it. Revelatory language will always be the lifeblood of the Christian Church, founded upon the very Word made flesh, the revelation of the Father, and it will also always be our great stumbling block. Satan knew the scriptures enough to tempt our Lord. Revelation can be distorted, will be distorted, if the Christian Church does not test such prophetic words against The Word.
History has proven that even the most learned and most cultured of Christians can be deceived. As Christians we are called to test the spirits, not to believe every spirit, but to test the spirits to see if they are from God. The nation-state is not from God, racialism is not from God, hatred and vengeance is not from God. Mercy is of God, long-suffering is of God, patience and radical hospitality is of God. Test the spirits, beloved, and resist the dream.
[1] Das Evangelische Deutschland. Kirchliche Rundschau für das Gesamtgebiet der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche, Nr. 30-31/1944, p. 74; reprinted in Bernd Sösemann (with Marius Lange), Propaganda: Medien und Öffentlichkeit in der NS-Diktatur: eine Dokumentation und Edition von Gesetzen, Führerbefehlen und sonstigen Anordnungen sowie propagandistischen Bild- und Textüberlieferungen im kommunikationshistorischen Kontext und in der Wahrnehmung des Publikums, volume 1. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2011, p. 708.
[2] CD I/1, p. 93
