Earlier this week I wrote about the tendency we can have, particularly in religious circles, to move from place to place where we will be sure to hear the same thing over and over again.
As I hope to articulate today, this does not mean that not believing anything or that having a faith without doctrine is virtuous. In fact, a faith or worldview that rejects all doctrine can be much more dangerous than rigid faith.
First, an observance for a meaningful day in Canada:
Today is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. This is a day for all Canadians to consider the legacy of colonization in our country and to look and work for healing. The consideration ought to lead many of us to admit our own negligence or worse in perpetuating a system that came from a programme of cultural genocide and abuse. Much of this oppressive action was legitimized by people, denominations and churches that claim the name “Christian”. This alone ought to lead to prayerful self-reflection and a sense of communal repentance for all of us who claim to adhere to Christian faith.
Dear God;
How do we confess on the part of a people, of a church? How do we admit sin and action that was so heinous that we would think we could never do such things? What if we don’t feel that we ourselves directly sinned in such ways? What does it mean to accept responsibility for the actions of people who are part of our heritage, even when those actions are ugly and evil?
By your grace, grant that we can be part of the reconciliation. May we not lay blame elsewhere as we and so many often do. Instead, may we be spiritually courageous enough to see our own failure, shortcoming, and sin. May we see how some of the ways that we have thought and lived have demonstrated a failure to truly love. In seeing this, may we not push away the reality of terrible evil, done in the name of Christian faith. May we repent over such evil as if it were our own. It might just be our own.
And show us a better way. May we open our eyes to the beauty and richness and wisdom of the other.
Amen
A number of years ago I read a book called “The Twisted Cross”
The book, by Doris Bergen, addresses how the Christian church in Germany largely lined up behind the Nazis before and during World War II. There were dissenting voices, including those of Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but in ways that foreshadowed christian nationalist movements of today, many Christians willingly supported the nationalism, twisted patriotism, and power of Hitler and the Nazis.
Richard Topping, President of Vancouver School of Theology, brought the book up in conversation over lunch this week. He mentioned one chapter in particular so I went back and read it.
Bergen offers three aspects of what became known as the German Christian Movement that opened the way for it to become aligned with the Nazis. She outlines how the church was anti-Jewish, anti-woman (it was proudly “manly”), and anti-doctrinal.
The Nazis spoke about how their brand of Christianity was to be positive. What they meant was that they rejected doctrine and dogma of the past that they branded as negative and restrictive. In ways that should make those of us committed to positive faith and the breakdown of walls think about what we truly mean, they also spoke of being “inclusive” and “declared war on potential barriers to spiritual unity. They proclaimed themselves as champions of anti-doctrinal Christianity.” (Bergen, The Twisted Cross)
This war on doctrine was to create a kind of vacuum of belief and identity which could then be filled with worship of and loyalty to the German state. Soon there were huge banners at political rallies that depicted crosses with swastikas in the middle of each. In 1937 a well known German Christian pastor said, “For us, what Jesus said is not decisive. Church councils too err and have erred. We gladly let ourselves be labeled heretics, for it has always been heretics who have saved the church’s life.”
It wasn’t long until the practices and rituals of the church became reconfigured out of allegiance to the nation. Bergen explains, “Baptism turned into a celebration of the unity of blood. One pastor spoke of being baptised ‘into the community of the volk - baptised into the worldview of the Fuhrer.”
(Above: German Christian flags featuring cross, swastika, and the initials DC for “Deutsche Christian. Here in Berlin on German Luther Day, November 19, 1933, celebrating the 450th anniversary of Martin Luther’s birth.)
I outline this history as a caution to people, like myself and others, who are aware of some of the damage of rigid and divisive theological expression and practice that we have seen in evangelicalism and other expressions of Christian faith. As we move to more hopeful, less divisive, and indeed positive expressions of Christian faith and theology we should not aim for a faith without doctrine. The German Christian movement demonstrated how the rejection of doctrine can create space for horrible distortion and for a church that is decidedly anti-Christ.
Rather than reject doctrine, we should move towards a renewal of theology. We should aim to be hopeful and positive, not in spite of Christian faith, but because of it. We should engage our minds enough to see how historical evil, such as the Holocaust and the policy of church and government in Canada towards Indigenous peoples, were, in part, the result of an abdication of actual Christian theology. In the name of Jesus, people took up policies and even murderous campaigns to wipe out entire people groups. We are still living in the damage of those things today.
Recently, PBS aired a new Ken Burns documentary series. It is called “The US and the Holocaust” and it focusses on American immigration policy before and during WWII. Much of it shows how the public and the government both worked to prevent Jewish people from entering the United States, even once the horror of the Holocaust was discovered. To note, Canadian immigration policy was as bad or worse. Near the end of the series, as the documentary addresses the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi leaders after the war, it is pointed out that to this time in history there was no legal term for the attempted extermination of a culture and a people. At Nuremberg, the American lawyer presenting on war crimes used a new word, just coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish legal scholar. We know the word well today. It is “genocide”.
The German Christian movement wound up, by being anti-Jewish, anti-doctrinal and anti-woman, supporting a genocidal government. How much, by being anti-Indigenous have Christian movements been at least culturally genocidal?
If we are to really face the truth, we would consider how much of what has been called evangelism or “sharing faith” has, at times, become enmeshed with political, social, and cultural programmes that have sought to defeat, eradicate, or erase another culture or people.
If we are to come to terms with this we will reflect upon what it means bear witness to a faith that we call hopeful. As we speak about reflecting the love of Jesus Christ for all people, how could this possibly mean the eradication of difference of culture or belief?
Jesus was not the leader of a genocidal movement, yet, in his name, genocidal movements have garnered following and allegiance. How sickened should we be that the name of Jesus was the one that was being used to grant legitimacy to hateful and horrible actions?
In order to move towards something better we can’t simply say that “those people” were misguided. We must admit that all too easily programmes of “evangelism” and “conversion” and “sharing faith” can become anti-Christian, entirely unChristlike.
I am not sure of what the better and more hopeful ways look like. I think that we have a ways to go. There are scriptural examples of sharing faith that do not include eradication of culture and people. I do know that in Christian faith, taking the example and love of Jesus more seriously, not less so, will help us down the hopeful road of repentance and reconciliation.
Challenging and timely words Todd. Thank you.