Political Christians vs. Nazi Liberals

Getting involved with politics is a double-edged sword for religious groups: on the one hand, they have the opportunity to affect national policies in a way that is compatible with their beliefs; on the other hand those beliefs may become corrupted by the political process. Usually this is an observation one might hear from religious liberals, but religious conservatives are also noticing.

Novakeo wrote for EtherZone a couple of years ago:

The ultimate heresy of bringing into human government a religious attitude and perspective will not save this country it will guarantee its destruction. It is no different when Christians create politically religious states then it is for Moslems. Both are equally perverse and suicidal. In God’s word it simply states – “My kingdom is not from this world; if my kingdom were from this world; my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” John 18:36

Sounds like a person who makes a lot of sense. Much of the article is taken up by comparisons with Nazi Germany and how Germany Christians compromised themselves by associating too closely with the government:

German Christians and conservatives knowingly and deliberately aligned themselves with what they thought to be their political and cultural savior who promised to return them to the Christian traditions which once was Germany. They wanted to believe to the point of willful blindness. ... The deception was complete, established by an intense Christian component and an enthusiastic community which wanted to believe despite its obvious fallaciousness. This delusion was further cemented by the miraculous economic turnaround and the reemergence of a prideful nation under the Nazis. To conservatives it was further proof of the righteousness of Hitler and his bunch of twerps.

That also makes a lot of sense. Novakeo seems to lose it, however, when writing:

Ultra liberalism permeated German society on all levels; everything that conservatives and Christians regarded as perverse was glorified in post World War I Germany. Sexual promiscuity, sodomy and feminism were the order of the day. In the media, any deviancy was magnified and glorified and declared normal behavior. ... We all know that Hitler and his gang brought liberal excess to new heights, the Nazis were the quintessence of immorality — sodomites and pedophiles they were, but in the end that did not matter, what he said was more influential and important than what he did.

The Nazis get called a lot of things, but liberals? What was it, exactly, that identified them and their policies as liberal: opposing homosexuality? Opposing prostitution? Opposing divorce? Opposing women in politics and having careers outside the home? It’s true that Weimar Germany got involved with a lot of liberal ideas — but what Novakeo seems to miss is the fact that the reaction to these liberal ideas is what helped increase support for the Nazis.

People were upset over changing gender roles, increased promiscuity, and so forth. The Nazis used this by attacking all forms of liberalism. The Nazis were anti-liberal in every sense of the term. Even their anti-Semitism was, at its heart, a form of anti-liberalism because Jews have been the scapegoats for opponents of modernity since the beginning of the Enlightenment. For most of the modern era, European anti-Semitism has been an expression of anti-modernity and anti-liberalism, a conservative and reactionary hatred of everything which has defined the modern world.

Read More:

• Secularism 101
• Separation of Church and State 101