Germany was a Christian nation long before the Nazi’s came along in the 1920s. When the Nazi’s took power in Germany, they were widely and generally supported. Even after the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, a majority of the German People (in a survey conducted by the US military) remained sympathetic to the Nazis and wished for a return of surviving Nazi leaders. Most Germans were either active members of the Nazi party or were sympathetic, and most were Christians, mainly Catholic. (There were a lot of non-Christian Germans at the beginning of this period, but the Christian Germans killed or drove away most of them.) Most Germans were anti Semitic and many were directly involved in the slaughter of over six million Jews and other “undesirables.” The Holocaust was a perfectly logical extension of over a century of increasingly bitter and obsessive anti Semitism evolving hand and hand with German Catholic political ideology and white supremacist doctrine in Germany and elsewhere. There were no Atheists involved in any of this. None.
The image above is the Catholic Church’s National Bishop Friedrich Coch saluting Hitler in 1933. Photo from here.
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
I am german. What you write is mostly true i think. But the protestants had a slight majority over catholics in germany… not that it matters. Both protestants and catholics are getting fewer and fewer nowadays with protestants losing more than catholics.
One can go further with a little imagination. I am no expert, but I can see the worst ant-Semitism being focussed in southern Germany (Bavaria), as well as Austria, Poland, and Croatia – all strongly catholic. Certainly the protestant north was complicit, although the tiny opposition included the lutheran Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Why then, were France and Italy not also enthusiastic for the cause? The catholic church in those countries had a higher priority: defeating communism, which was a serious threat to their power.
It’s fun to speculate!
Of course, Nazi Ratzi knows all this because he was in the middle of it. That makes his lying so much worse.
There were Atheists involved, as victims though; people seem to remember the yellow stars but keep forgetting the red triangles..
@2 The Vichy regime did willingly cooperate in the “Endlösung”
There were Jews involved in the Holocaust. There were Jews pulling gold out of fellow Jew’s teeth. So what’s the point? Germany was a “culturally Christian” nation in the same way that many Christians now claim that we Atheists who live in America are “culturally Christian” (even the ex-Jewish ones, by the sound of it).
The Holocaust was brought to you by the Christian mindset, the Christian Religion, and was part of an historical anti Semitism that was a conspiracy of Christians generally and the organized churches.
The Scotts should have thrown the Pope out the moment he threw off the Church’s responsibility in the Holocaust. The US should toss the Vatican ambassador/council/whatever out after a stern talking to. Every European country should call their representatives to the Vatican in for a strategy session.
I’m annoyed at an atheist to be blamed for the Holocaust. But the entire world should be very angry at the Pope for handing the responsibility for this event off. What’s next? That the Holocaust did not happen in Germany, that it was the Poles that did it?
It will be interesting to see how various flavors of anti-Holocaust denialists respond to this. Will the Christian and Jewish/Religious anti-denialists sit on their hands? So far most have, as far as my RSS feed knows.
Don’t know who said it first but it is too true…
ITS NOT FASCISM WHEN YOU CALL IT RELIGION!
A Heinlein story predicts a religious fascist state in america by 2100, looking at the tea party wackos and the xtian right’s efforts, it just might happen.
L.Long @ # 7: A Heinlein story predicts a religious fascist state in america by 2100…
Heinlein’s “Future History” involved an American theocracy being overthrown in 2100, after being established in the early decades of the 21st century.
Nehemiah Scudder lives…
Yah . Really Heinlein’s “Future History” involved an American theocracy being overthrown in 2100….
Greg– Thank you, thank you, thank you for saying this. Too many commentators seem to be going soft on this issue. The Pope’s scapegoating of atheists is the exact technique of the “Big Lie” that Adolph Hitler used against the Jews. If Ratzinger wanted to talk about WWII, he should have apologized for the church’s failure to excommunicate Hitler, instead of imitating his methods.
This is not about a 14 year old kid who was forced to join Hitler Youth. It’s not about who did or didn’t collaborate with the Third Reich in 1943. This is about a very powerful religious leader who– right now, September, 2010– is using the same methods pioneered by Adolph Hitler to scapegoat a group of innocent people, strictly on the basis of their private views about religion.
Ratzinger’s lies should be condemned by every honorable person, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, atheist, or whatever.
OK got detail wrong–40yr old memory.
But hopefully he is still right cuz then the theocracy will last only 50yrs.
I’d put more faith in this: http://www.timepage.org/time.html than in the musings of a science fiction writer whose main characters all sound the same and have a direct line to God in their brains.
And yet the most outspoken opponents of Nazism and eugenics at the time were evangelical Christians like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who also criticized the fake Christians of their day.
This is all consistent with what the Bible teaches about a nation’s church losing their salt and light and acting like the world instead of transforming it.
Your thinking here is nowhere near complex enough to be even considered thoughtful.
PS: Your agenda is showing.
Just picked up a Poul Anderson book at the used book store. Haven’t read him since I was a teenager. The interesting thing is the map he provides for the time in the far future. The Mississippi River is the Jugular River and the Rio Grand is shown by another name (83 year old memory lapse). Back to science fiction after so long…fascinating.
As to Christian Nazis. Power is power no matter the name of the organization. As I recall, the Nazis had some peculiar beliefs (such as a fascination with the Ark of the Covenant) that were not basically Christian in origin. And nominal Christians rarely practice their “faith” in all regards.
JimBrock
T Russell Hunter, it seems you simply can’t stand having facts you find to be inconvenient pointed out. Your religion’s lack of defense is showing.
Dean: As an ex-Catholic educated in parochial schools and by the Jesuits in college and law school, currently agnostic if not quite atheistic, let me add that religion has always been a good business. And the bigger the religion, the better the business. The Catholic church has been a good business for a long time. One of the popes (a few hundred years ago) let the cat out of the bag when he said “It has been most useful to us, this myth of Christ”.
JimBrock
the truth hurts us all , all of us in this world are guilty to some degree of the kind of hatred that can lead to the holocaust .yesterdays victims can and do sometimes become todays aggressor! look at the palestinian Israeli situation
Twice you use “Nazi’s” when you mean “Nazis.”
It is a thing my finger does sometimes.
I wonder how being Lutheran affected the statistics?
What’s the difference between
1. What you label yourself as
2. What group you associate with
3. Your attitudes, beliefs, and actions
??
Between January 30, 1933 – May 8, 1945, holocaust were primarily conducted by the active participation and/or under their active guidance, of a particular nationality. As highlighted in these blog, they had an important attribute being CHRISTIAN. However, the other attributes of that nationality during those periods were also such as (1) being a white supremacists society: GERMANs, (2) political belief: NAZISM (3) mad and fascists’ leadership: HITLER.
In fact during the said period there were many other wide-spread nationalities, existing on the face of the earth who were much better CHRISTIANS than the holocausters . Like say the Americans, the Canadian, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Portuguese, and the British etc. And they are not known as partaker of holocaust of that time. Therefore, to argue that holocaust was caused for being CHRISTAIN, do not seem to stand at all . Rather, most likely reasons seem to be the other three important attributes listed here.
Between January 30, 1933 – May 8, 1945, holocaust were primarily conducted by the active participation and/or under their active guidance, of a particular nationality. As highlighted in these blog, they had an important attribute being CHRISTIAN. However, the other attributes of that nationality during that periods were also such as (1) believing in racial supremacy (2) self centric political belief: NAZISM (3) fascists’ leadership: HITLER.
In fact during the said period there were many other wide-spread nationalities, existing on the face of the earths who were also CHRISTIANS, like say the Americans, the Canadian, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Portuguese, and the British etc. However, they are not known as partaker in holocaust of that time. Therefore, to argue that holocaust was caused for believing in CHRISTAIN faith, do not seem to stand at all. Rather, most likely reasons seem to be the other three important attributes listed here.
Just wanted to share with you a scripture of what Jesus said to his disciples. There has been many people throughout time that claimed their Christian faith is why they have done horrific things. Any Christian who supported or agreed with the persecution of Jews have not read their bible!!! The Jews are God’s beloved people…God said in Genesis that blessed are those who bless them and cursed are those who curses them! Jews and Christians alike…have individuals who have claimed their faith is why they have committed evil things. But as you can see from the following scripture, Jesus warned us about such people.
Matthew 7:15-20 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
Just to be clear here, the “Catholic” bishop you picture here is wearing prayer tabs, and was Friedrich Coch, and ordained Lutheran pastor. He may have been catholic, but NOT Catholic; i.e., a member of the universal Christian church, but not of the Roman Catholic church. Don’t fret though, there’s more than enough guilt to go around. The more pertinent question is where would the readers of this blog stand if confronted by the same set of circumstances? Which among you would place your right hand over your heart, rather than raising it to eye level?
Here are the real facts if any of you cared for TRUE history. Look up “Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech. “. Communism was a Jewish designed, financed, and run movement in Russia. It was purposely written to incite the not to bright to do the dirty work that the jewish Bolsheviks didn’t have the physical numbers to pull off. Once the Jews had the power in Russia they systematically killed off the white Christians. The Christian Germans knew the threat of communism would spread and sought to destroy it. They went after the Jews for their kinds part in communism and murder of Christians. Communismzionismjudaism are all one and the same thing.
Also the Po!es and Hungarians went after the Jewish communists and rightfully killed those who brought death and destruction to white Christians. Germany had only 768000 Jews in it before Hitler. Half the Jews received amnesty in America if not more so only a best number of 384000 Jews remained in Germany. No 6 million ever died and this lie has been disproved many times. Russia released the official camp numbers of Auschwitz and there were 73000 not 8 million. The Jewish Holocaust lie is to mask over their murders of white Christian Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, and Americans.
That’s “too,” not “to” in “not to bright.”
Also, you are something of a monster. And an idiot. Idiot monster, you are.
Eric Chmielecki, I cannot believe people like you still exist.You sound like a very embittered, malcontent. I wish I could say I feel sorry for you, but, you are what you are.
Were the Nazis, Christians? A “Myth of the 21st Century”
Just Another Internet Myth
“Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Matthew 7:15
Too often I see the accusations of “freethinkers” saying, “The Nazis were Christians. See how horrible your religion is!?” But is the religion of Christ, which teaches love and charity above all, really something that would produce an ideology like those of the Nazis? Now I think this is easily shown to be false.
Firstly, the Nazis engaged in a project to redefine Christianity. They literally took Christianity (Protestantism, Catholocism, etc.) and called it “Negative Christianity.” They next labeled their own beliefs “Positive Christianity” and of course endorsed it rather than actual Christianity. This was a move that was literally called the “German Faith Movement”; the goal was to bring the German people away from Christian ceremonies by replacing them with pagan equivalents, and to foster the rejection of Christian ethics, among other things.
Just to get a sneak peek of how Nazi ideology (or “Positive Christianity”) compared to Biblical Christianity, here are some haunting quotes from the leadership of this movement:
Nazi Ideology
“The Party stands on the basis of Positive Christianity, and positive Christianity is National Socialism… National Socialism is the doing of God’s will… God’s will reveals itself in German blood… Dr Zoellner and [Catholic Bishop of Munster] Count Galen have tried to make clear to me that Christianity consists in faith in Christ as the son of God. That makes me laugh… No, Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostle’s Creed… True Christianity is represented by the party, and the German people are now called by the party and especially the Fuehrer to a real Christianity… the Fuehrer is the herald of a new revelation”.
– Hans Kerrl, Nazi Minister for Church Affairs
——————–
“Our National Socialist ideology is far loftier than the concepts of Christianity, which in their essential points have been taken over from Jewry…”
“When we National Socialists speak of a belief, we do not understand by God, like naive Christians and their spiritual opportunists, a human-type being, who sits around somewhere in the sphere….The force of natural law, with which all the innumerable planets move in the universe, we call the Almighty, or God. The claim that this world force…can be influenced by so-called prayers or other astonishing things is based upon a proper dose of naivete or on a business shamelessness. As opposed to that we National Socialists impose on ourselves the demand to live naturally as much as possible, i.e., biologically. The more accurately we recognize and observe the laws of nature and of life, the more we adhere to them, so much the more do we conform to the will of the Almighty.”
Internal letters from Bierkamp to the Reich Main Security Office, part of the Bormann decree.
– Martin Bormann took charge of all of Hitler’s paperwork, appointments and personal finances. Hitler came to have complete trust in Bormann and the view of reality he presented. During one meeting, Hitler was said to have screamed, “To win this war, I need Bormann!” Some historians have suggested Bormann held so much power that, in some respects by 1945, he became Germany’s “secret leader” during the war.
——————–
One of the most important intellectual influences to Nazi ideology, was being described during the Numerburg trials:
“…the defendant Rosenburg…advocated a new National Socialist faith or religion to replace the Christian confessions in Germany. He stated the Catholic and Protestant churches represent “negative Christianity” and do not correspond to the soul of the “Nordic racially determined peoples;” that a German religious movement would have to declare that the idea of neighborly love is unconditionally subordinated to national honor; the national honor is the highest human value and does not admit of any equal valued force such as Christian love.”
http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/donovan/pdf/Nuremberg_3/Vol_X_18_02.pdf
“A German religion, bit by bit, will present in the churches transferred to it, in place of the crucifixion[,] the spirit of fire – the heroic – the highest sense.”
– Alfred Rosenburg, Commissar for Supervision of Intellectual and Ideological Education of the Nazi Party, The Myth of the 20th Century
——————–
Albert Speer quotes Hitler stating, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”
Albert Speer (1971). Inside the Third Reich.
——————–
“…the only way of getting rid of Christianity is to allow it to die little by little.”
“Kerrl, with the noblest of intentions, wanted to attempt a synthesis between National Socialism and Christianity. I don’t believe the thing’s possible, and I see the obstacle in Christianity itself.”
“When all is said, we have no reason to wish that the Italians and Spaniards should free themselves from the drug of Christianity. Let’s be the only people who are immunised against the disease.”
– Quotes from Hitler in the minutes from private meetings and dinners he had with his Nazi staff, Hitler’s Table Talk. Pretty controversial information, but considered fairly authentic (if not doctored somewhat) — written by # 2 Nazi: Martin Bormann.
Scholarly Assessments and Studies
THE NAZI MASTER PLAN
Annex 4: The Persecution of the Christian Churches
http://www.leics.gov.uk/the_nazi_master_plan.pdf
The Persecution of the Christian Churches
This study describes, with factual evidence and many more quotes, the Nazi purposes, policies and methods of persecuting the Christian Churches in Germany and occupied Europe.
http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/donovan/pdf/Nuremberg_3/Vol_X_18_02.pdf
——————-
According to a US Office of Strategic Services report, Hitler had a general plan, even before his rise to power, to destroy the influence of Christian churches within the Reich, The report titled “The Nazi Master Plan” stated that the destruction of the church was a goal of the movement right from the start, but that it was inexpedient to express this extreme position publicly.
His intention, according to Bullock, was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity. He articulated his view on the relationship between religion and national identity as “We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany”
– Bullock, Alan Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
——————-
Samuel Koehne, a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute, working on the official Nazi views on religion, answers the question Was Hitler a Christian? thus:
“Emphatically not, if we consider Christianity in its traditional or orthodox form: Jesus as the son of God, dying for the redemption of the sins of all humankind. It is a nonsense to state that Hitler (or any of the Nazis) adhered to Christianity of this form.”
-Koehne, Samuel, Hitler’s faith: The debate over Nazism and religion
——————-
According to Robert S. Wistrich Hitler thought Christianity was finished but he did not want any direct confrontation for strategic reasons
-Robert S. Wistrich (1 May 2007). Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe
Nazi Propaganda Lives On…
The Nazi party was in fundamental opposition to the teachings of Christ, which is to say, they were in opposition to Christianity. To believe that they were practicing Christians is just to be sucked into their 60 year-old propaganda. Their plans showed otherwise.
The “evidence” I hear in favor of the Nazis and Hitler being Christians are usually several pre-war quotations from Hitler (a known liar and propagandist) and some silliness about government issued belt buckles. But even these, if shown to be credible, are severely outweighed by doing a brief, and quite rudimentary, conceptual analysis of the Christian ethic as opposed to the Nazi ethic. If we compare how Christians are supposed to behave and how the Nazis thought we should behave, then I would more readily call many atheists Christians than I would the Nazis…
All we need to do is look at the basics of Christianity to see if the Nazis were even remotely close:
2 Basic Rules of Christianity
Matthew 22:
36 “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 He replied, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, and with all your mind.
38 This is the first and greatest commandment.
39 And the second is like it: You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Galatians 1:6-9:
“I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.”
Matthew 7:
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you dressed like sheep, but inside they are vicious wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruit.”
Galatians 5 tells what fruits to look for:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control.
DOES THAT SOUND LIKE NAZIS?
Finally
According to the December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine on page 38, Einstein said:
“Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks…”
“Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.”
“Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.” – Tyler Durden
There are two parallel questions
conflated in this discussion.
!. Is Christianity essentially anti-Semitic?
2. Is anti-Semitism historically a Christian development .
Christianity is passionately defended by Thresh
as a religion of love and not hate. That is honorable
and correct according to the text.
I’ll accept that, with small reservations, to address the first question, but the second deserves a much different answer.
From the days of the earliest Christianitys (and as historians demonstrate there were many “Christian” religions in the early centuries) anti-Semitism was a virulent exercise in hatred and cult building (my god is better than your god) by the earliest Church Fathers (see Origin and others); an undeniable tradition that was carried on explicitly by Martin Luther and beyond him. Anti-Semitism is an historically Christian disease.
This dichotomy explains the heroic resistance of many Christians (both Protestant and Catholic) to the ideology and the crimes of Nazism; it also illuminates the catastrophic complicity of the hierarchies of all Christian churches (with few heroic exceptions eg. Jules Gerard Saliege, Archbishop of Toulouse and , of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer plus several thousand other religious leaders in the camps.); it also explains the theological excuses offered for virulent crimes against humanity committed many fascist priests and ministers.
It must be noted that most of the comments here are sincere and thoughtful, those of Eric Chmielecki, are canned neo-Nazi propaganda, which are as close to pure lies as is practically possible
===>>>
“Here are the real facts if any of you cared for TRUE history. Look up “Benjamin Freedman’s 1961 speech. “.”
<<<===
The above introduction is neither to anything remotely true nor to history. It is the bigoted lie of a fantasist who would repeat a Holocaust of hate crimes, justified by insanity.
“!. Is Christianity essentially anti-Semitic?”
Not until Saint Paul made it from a Jewish sect into one for the goyim.
“2. Is anti-Semitism historically a Christian development .”
Somewhat. But not entirely. It definitely helped.
One thing that “helped” was that for most of the middle ages the bible was believed literally and there was a ban on usury, therefore there was no bank like borrowing and lending, it was all “I give you a sack of coins, get them back to me when you have enough spare”. But that was CHRISTIAN theology, not Jewish, so the Jews could take up banking and loan money with interest and therefore fund the wars and castles and banquets the nobs loved.
And who likes a banker when they owe the bank money?
And they’re all Jews.
Add on the “They killed Jesus Christ!!!!” flogged to the peasants as an excuse to default on repayment of the loan to the bank by the lord who rather liked keeping his cash because a dead burned-alive banker has no papers to prove you owed him money.
So the nobs definitely stoked the fires of anti-semitic hatred, purely for financial reasons,but using the rhetoric of christian dogma.
And despite all that, the growth of the middle class in the Renaissance meant that the jewish bankers who hadn’t been killed off to clear a debt made a SHITLOAD of money off the new economic system, and became the big banking money you never hear of today.
And when you’re strapped for cash, after, for example, ruinous punitive actions placed on your country for finding oil in the middle east (yup, that was WWI) and planning to open up a train service to get that oil to Germany and make it independently wealthy, but losing the battle, picking on the jews would allow you to borrow all the cash in the banks in the country (and any invaded ones too) and close the debt down by killing off the bank owners, meaning lots of spending to get people working.
Expect much the same from Trump, except he’ll bail with the cash and leave the bankers alive to demand the debt paid by you.
Ergo, anti-Semitism did not come from people following Christ, it came from people following Mammon (falsely claiming they followed Christ, and that likely for purely PC reasons).
Though they hardly invented hypocrisy, it still makes for a rich irony: These people claim to follow a deity that strongly condemns them for their defining characteristic.
They were following christ as much as any other did.
You can’t go saying “Well, though they SAID they were followers of christ, they’re not REALLY”, because all we have from the “real followers of christ” is that they say they are.
Unless, of course, every christian on the planet gives you the power to decide the true christians, but that usually led to massive wars and even genocide.
So, no, they were followers of christ. They said they were.
it all depends on which christ one is talking about. There are many: Jesus, Mohammed, Mammon, Moloch, etc.
Some are obviously more popular than others.
No true Muslim considers Mohammed(pbuh) as Christ, the saviour.
Jesus(pbuh) is considered the saviour of true monotheists;
Quran 43:61 – And (Jesus) shall be a Sign (for the coming of) the Hour (of Judgment): therefore have no doubt about the (Hour), but follow ye Me: this is a Straight Way.
No, it only depends on who they say they follow.
That’s all anyone has about what mythical creature anyone follows has. They say they follow it.
Either we accept them at their word or we don’t let ANYONE just claim they follow $DEITY until they’ve proven they mean the actual $DEITY, not some other $DEITY totally not the same as the actual one.
So no, it doesn’t matter which one. They call it christ, that’s who they follow. Want to say it’s someone different? Prove that other one really exists and the one they follow really exists and then show they’re not the same one.
They claim they’re following “a category”.
And how do you expect anyone to prove an abstraction?
No, they claim they;re following christ. You can go read it just up the thread there, your post 34, sans the unfounded insistence that THEIR version of christ isn’t the real one.
Tell you what, since it confuses you so, I’ll just say christ and if you feel upset that I’m picking on christians, you can blame yourself for being confused about using $DEITTY.
“Christ” is a category of ${DEITY}. They claim they’re following a category. It’s not a version of a christ, it’s a question of “which one?” It goes unstated. Ergo, you can determine which one by listening to their words and observing their actions.
I’m not upset at who or what you pick on. Have at it. And I’m not confused. Thank you for caring.
Christ is the deity of christians. To follow christ you have to say you do. The Nazis did. The medieval european nobility did too.
Simple as that: they were christians, followers of christ. Who was their deity.
PS you ARE confused. Christ is a value for the variable $DEITY, $DEITY isn’t a category, that would be something like “char” or “int”. DEITY would be a class. Not $DEITY. That’s a variable. A scalar variable. Not a class.
Like I said, you’re VERY confused. And in denial over it.
I am not confused; you are demonstrating my point: The masses who claim to be Christians are confused.
And it is they who have confused things, not I. They have caused the word to lose its original meaning (if it ever had one) and take on a new meaning.
Christ, n
A real or imagined figure representing a personal savior; one who is followed as a lord; a leader and provider of values and principles.
‘Tis not I who is in denial. And that’s the problem…
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
No, you’re still confused.
I tried twice to explain it and I really can’t get it any simpler and can’t be arsed to try either since you seem convinced of something or other.
But your comment that those dudes were not worshiping christ is wrong, they said they were, they are, end of story, and that BS about category and christ and all that other crap is entirely irrelevant, so you go ahead and giggle about whatever it is that you think you’ve got.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-9/christians-against-nazis-german-confessing-church.html
Christianity is evil!
Read the Torah, it will do you some good.
Uhm, they’re both equally BS. And despite the protestations otherwise, the NT is just a sequel to the OT and requires the OT to be real for it to be relevant. And the Quran is the third part of the triliogy of fantasy novels, running off the other two parts.
All three are the same mythology.
https://youtu.be/L6fem7-ucxg
Didnt the pommy cunts not understand their own books?
Perhaps ideas like dont fucking steal and dont fucking kill were a bit ambiguous. Except they clearly wernt. We know exactly what the British pricks thought about killing and stealing. It was really really bad. So bad that if one was hungry and stole some bread …
Cockwomble hypocritical pricks they are.
Well in the original context, “murder” was only for fellow semites. Heathens, Barbarians and other Goyim were not possible to *murder*, so the admonition *was* followed. Just don’t kill fellow Jews.
It was when the original Jewish sect of YAHWEH worshippers was turned into a religion for non-jews and melded into the Roman power structure to create the “Holy Roman Empire” that it got all cocked up. And a lot of that ALSO included adding lots of Hellenistic theology, such as virginal births and birth gifts, etc, into the “original” religion to make it palatable to the new cache of worshippers.
Note on the Torah: it’s merely the interpretation of human people on the “holy word of god”. It admits to that, so by some metric a better document since at least it isn’t claiming to BE the Word of God ™.
The Quran also has a set of amendments by admitted humans. Hence the sunni/shia split: two different takes on whether the additions are canon or not. And quite important when the vast majority of the Quran is the annotations by humans, not the Word of Mohammed ™.
Christians TREAT the OT as canon, but when cross examined, drop the OT like a vicar drops a pair of soiled panties when their boss does a surprise visit. Which makes them less honest than either the other two sects of yahweh worship.
“And quite important when the vast majority of the Quran is the annotations by humans, not the Word of Mohammed”
We differ on that, but can anyone truly dispute that the Oneness of God is crystal clear in the Holy Quran?
Sure, atheists and non-Muslims will wish to dispute that, but they have to, because otherwise they disprove their own faiths.
“Christians TREAT the OT as canon, but when cross examined, drop the OT like a vicar drops a pair of soiled panties when their boss does a surprise visit. ”
CNNNN examined this a few years ago in this short
clip from the show.
https://youtu.be/B8ziECzNKhM
You make atheists look like crap with this shitpost. First the elections that put the Nazis in power were rigged. Nazis were not “generally supported”. Second, majority of Germany was protestant, especially Lutheran. Third, the Nazis actively persecuted Catholics (I guess you have that in common), and even set aside barracks for priests at Dachau. Rescuing Jews was a top priority for the Catholic church, who while officially neutral, were unofficially and openly critical of the regime. The bishop, Friedrich Coch? Lutheran bishop. The Catholic bishop of Münich openly denounced Nazis on radio broadcasts and in church services. You were right about one thing, there weren’t openly atheist Nazis. Atheism was illegal because it was associated with socialism. The USSR was ran by atheists though, and themselves killed millions of political dissidents. Your us vs them mentality is exactly the mentality that these “evil religions” used you self ironic cuck.
At the end of the war, Catholics made up about 40% of the German population. The anti-semitism of the Catholic church has a long and horrid history, and the undercurrent of hatred it created against Jews appears to have definitely been exploited by the Nazis. Similarly, Martin Luther was apparently also a rabid antisemite so there is plenty of blame and shame to go around. I think that there is little doubt that the Vatican feared Communism far more than Nazism and that this caused it to take a less than heroic stance against the Nazis early on, when it might have made a difference; rather, in the beginning, many members of the Church hierarchy appeared to embrace Nazism. Some German Christians fought the Nazis and heroically tried save Jews, but, overall, I have to share the opinion that Nazi Germany was largely Christian, and that Christians were largely Nazis. Interviewed right after the war, the majority of the German population were said to be willing to go back to Nazism. Do the math.
Ratlines.
Mmmm.
“Rescuing Jews was a top priority for the Catholic church”
If this statement is accurate ( i have no idea ) it raises many others.
If biases exist, a triage process should expose them.
So im curious to see a list of priorities in order of urgency, which might then shed light on the subject.
Steve P. ” At the end of the war …”
Curious about Belgians attitudes at the end of the war, and if one could charactetize the Belgian state and people as christian at that time.
Because by 1958, they were a pile of shit. So did they decline to the 1958 condition, or rise to that condition from something lower.
Ratlines indeed. For those who don’t know, those were free fake passports and trips to Argentina for fleeing Nazis after the war, courtesy of the Vatican.
Also, there was the actions 0r lack thereof , of the Church to stop Germans’ razzia (roundup) of Jews in Rome in October 1943. While the church managed to harbor some Jews, the stand they took against the Germans was one of a cowardly neutrality, probably calculated to keep the Germans from seizing the Pope and the Vatican.
Oh, and here is a good one from Phayer’s “The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965”. “On October 19, one day after the freight train packed with Jews left Rome for Auschwitz, the Vatican publically acknowledged, as Hitler’s foreign minister, Ribbentrop, wished, that German military behavior in occupied Rome toward the Vatican had been correct and civil. ” p. 101 Yet there is ample evidence that the Vatican knew that the Jews were being transported to a death camp.
So Joshua’s protests about the actions of Christian Germans really oversimplify and trivialize the great, complex, horrid evil that was perpetrated by the Nazis with altogether too much complicity by German “Christians” and a Vatican so obsessed with Communism that they blinded themselves to Nazism.
All this absurd article proves is that the author has no idea what is a REAL Christian.
I don’t have much time so let me tell you this.
You can “be” a buddhist, or muslim, or political party member, simply by saying you are one.
HOWEVER, you can’t be a cow just because you walk into a barn and say so.
Christianity, unlike ALL of the others, has a fixed set of things you must do clearly laid out in GOD’s word. If you do them sincerely and in faith (choosing to believe) then you will be a real Christian (and boy will you know it).
If you don’t you are out of luck.
It does not matter how many times you went to church, It does not matter if you pray. It does not matter if you got baptized, took communion 1000 times, or studied and followed church doctrine to a ‘T’. As the word says, “Let GOD be true and every man a liar.”
The world is FULL of cults and denominations that teach their traditions instead of GOD’s word.
It’s really simple: It’s GOD’s way or no way.
I have seen the most immoral and openly evil people claim they are HIS but everything they do contradicts their claim.
But then I look at the VAST majority of those who saved Jews from Hitler and I see that most were real Christians. I look as Detrich Boenhoffer and all the other Christians who were sent to Nazi camps for defying Hitler and I know they were REAL Christians.
GOD says in HIS word that many will come before HIM saying “LORD LORD” and claim to be HIS. And GOD will say to them; “GO AWAY FROM ME, I NEVER KNEW YOU!”
BTW, the very best studies tell us that only 5% to 10% of all those who self-identify as Christians have actually done as GOD specifies in HIS word to be born again.
Please don’t pretend that those people who ignored all of the teachings of GOD’s word and embraced evil are the followers of GOD. Even you must see the absurdity of that suggestion. And remember; it is not I who set down these ‘rules of salvation’ it was the GOD that they all claim to follow. Clearly, they serve a different master and blaming GOD is idiotic. And trying to make those of us who are Christians take the blame for their evil is also evil.
Just as it would be evil for me to say you are a child molester because someone used your name after molesting a child. Would you accept my defense of accusing you because the molester used your name? Is it right for you to bear that burden? Of course not.
When people directly and consistently disobey the word of GOD please assume they are not HIS.You’ll look a lot smarter and people might start liking what you right because it holds up to reason.
Apparently god endorses misleading comments as well as random capitalization.
“You’ll look a lot smarter and people might start liking what you right because it holds up to reason.”
Great advice on looking smart and having your righting liked!