This article, by D.L. Mayfield, appeared in a recent issue of The Christian Century
What made it possible for people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer to resist?
Reggie L. Williams, author of Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus, makes the compelling case that the only reason Bonhoeffer was able eventually to resist the fervent nationalism of his countrymen was that he had spent a year marinating in the Black church in Harlem, absorbing a real relationship with a suffering servant Jesus. Without this necessary and world-shaking experience, Bonhoeffer most likely would not have been able to resist the tides that drove the rest of his people to seek safety in power.
So I asked my library to get me the aforementioned book and I’m, reading it now. Reggie L. Williams, a Black scholar, might be a good candidate for an article or podcast here.
I also recently listened to a disturbing online lecture from the National Library of Israel on efforts by Nazi propaganda to recast Jesus as an Aryan. It was a hellish collaboration between church and state:
*In 1939, certain German theologians established the Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life, which was financed by the Protestant church and flourished successfully until 1945. *The Institute’s members – over 200 professors, bishops and pastors – published a new version of the Bible and hymnal purged of Jewish references, as well as “research” on Judaism aimed at supporting Nazi measures against the Jews.
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3 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
2
Case proven.
Against us all.
Fascism is human. And it’s commutative; it works both ways. To be human is to be fascist.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
9
He conspired to kill Hitler. After WWII the CIA were terrified at the mundanity of the Nazis. It was so easy. They realised, as recent events have shown, fascism circles democracy, is second nature to us. China, Russia, Burma, Afghanistan, Belarus, Brazil, you name it. It’s there. I deliberately use the term fascist as I used to shy away from it, used to think it was overused. No it isn’t. It’s provocative. Good. Fascist cops are fascist.
Interesting, Beagle Lady. Yes, the Nazis DID have a strange fiction about Aryans, as referenced in your article. The Aryans were not European at all, and the unhistorical nature of that assertion was mentioned by Durant in one of his History of Civilization volumes of the time – plus made fun of in (I believe) a Charlie Chaplin film, etc. The sort of history or anthropological history the Nazis were pushing was (evidently) widely known to have no truth to it. But, evidently, when a state runs and operates the media (as the Nazis eventually did), the version of truth that gets put out there can become extremely unfair and unbalanced.
