Lent, 2009

Brothers and Sisters:

I am reading a fascinating book by Susannah Heschel,

entitled The Aryan Jesus, which reports on the work of Christian
theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. Ms. Heschel is the
daughter of Abraham Heschel, a survivor of the holocaust, who
became a great teacher of Judaism in New York beginning in 1940,
after he had fled Poland in 1938. His daughter is presently a
professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth University.
Her research into the topic began in the late 1980’s and the
topic reminded me of a curious and somewhat troubling memory
of an incident that had happened to me years before that in about
1976/77. While researching some topic or other in a German
language periodical of the war years I noticed an advertisement for
the “German winter war effort” to support the troops (Nazi troops)
together with the notorious swastika. I wondered at the time how
widespread the Nazi influence on all aspects of life must have been
in those years, and what effects Nazism must have played on the
theological reflections of those years must have been. The
experience was a sobering one for me and made me forever after
cautious about ever uniting any kind of nationalism with pure
theological research into any aspect of Biblical research, whether
concerning the Old Testament or the New Testament.
Heschel’s book details how widespread and deep-seated the
Nazi efforts were to rid Christianity (especially German
Protestantism) of any Jewishness of Jesus. “The Institute for the
Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church
Life” was established in 1939 by a group of protestant theologians,
pastors and churchgoers, primarily Lutheran, in orientation. Their
goals were to “dejudaize” the church for Germany by developing
new biblical and liturgical expressions. They “redefined
Christianity as a Germanic religion whose founder, Jesus, was no
Jew but rather had fought valiantly to destroy Judaism, falling as
victim to that struggle. Germans were now called upon to be the
victors in Jesus’ own struggle against the Jews, who were said to
be seeking Germany’s destruction (p.1).”
Among other things, all traces of a Jewish Jesus were
eventually removed. A blond- haired, muscular, Germanic
superhero replaced any traces of a Semitic Jesus in art. In the Bible
itself, this movement simply ignored the Old Testament altogether.
In the New Testament, “re-renderings” of traditional passages and
their translations became commonplace. In John 12:13, when Jesus
enters Jerusalem to cries of “Hosanna” the German translation
became “Heil,” as in the notorious Nazi greeting “Sieg, heil.” And
“King of Israel” is changed to “king” in that same passage.
Liturgically, the German Christian movement wanted to
create a government church that would transcend denominational
differences, whether Catholic, Lutheran or Reformed. Prayer itself
became a problem in Nazi Germany, because if prayer implies an
attitude of humble supplication and dependence on God to fulfill
needs then it was at odds with the “manly, militaristic posture
promoted by Hitler.”
Here we might think of any number of nationalists at prayer.
If he thinks his nation is right in all things and stronger than any
enemy then what exactly is it he prays for? How exactly does he
pray humbly if he is so proud of his nation that he expects them to
defeat any and all enemies? If his “enemies” are always fiends and
his people are always heroes, then any prayer he utters becomes
some form of self-adulation. It is easy to be swept up in such
nationalist currents. Here, we might do well to remember the
example of the two men who go to pray in the Temple in Luke
18:9-14. It is the tax collector, who prayed as he did, humbly but
sincerely, (“O God, be merciful to me a sinner) who goes away
justified.
The Nazis tried in every way to rid themselves of any and all
links with Judaism and wound up inventing for themselves a
Christianity without “the Christ.” The Jewish roots of Jesus are as
firmly established in Judaism as the Church is rooted in Christ. The
Nazis had convinced themselves that they were a super race and
spun out a myth to support their absurd claims. Their motives were
pure and simple racism. Racism is a sin purely and simply, no
matter whether it’s found in Nazi Germany or in America today.
There were many Germans who were taken in by the Nazi
propaganda; many who shared the racist undertones of the
movement and some who didn’t. But there were certainly also
many who were silent in the face of the racial slurs, and belittling
jokes about Jews, which ultimately led to the monstrous and
heinous holocaust which followed.
This Lent would be a good time for us to examine our own
consciences about our silence in the face of prejudice against
others. Christian charity demands that we speak up when racial
jokes are told (or about to be told). To demean anyone for any
reason is to deny Christ.

Fr. Hummer