A board hanging in Lippe, Westphalia, in 1935 crudely summed up the Jews for the German Christian Movement (Glaubensbewegung "Deutsche Christen"): "Baptism may be quite useful, but it cannot straighten a nose." The German Christians, as adherents of the movement came to be called, believed National Socialism and Christianity to be mutually reinforcing. Racist antisemitism formed the core of their program. Accordingly, they aimed to purge Christianity of everything they deemed Jewish and to reconstitute the church as an association of blood and race.
Doris L. Bergen wrote the above in her article “Storm Troopers of Christ” in Betrayal: German Churches and the Holocaust. Traditional Christianity teaches that all believers become one in Christ — that things like racial distinctions are supposed to disappear. It would seem, then, that the German Christians’ preservation of the distinction between Jews and non-Jews is anti-Christian. But is it? German Christians based this upon other distinctions they maintained which are also accepted by other Christian groups:
German Christians used divisions between the sexes to justify the introduction of racial distinctions into the church, Just as Christian faith did not eradicate physical differences between male and female, they maintained, it did not negate the “biological fact” of race. Wilhelm Stapel, a prolific German Christian theologian, spelled out this line of thinking in 1934. “In the earthly congregation,” he wrote, “one cannot revoke the difference between the sexes, even though, ‘in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage’ (Matthew 22:30).”
It was just as impossible, Stapel went on, “to declare invalid physical, mental, and spiritual differences among peoples, simply because, ‘by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles’ (I Corinthians 12:13).” Stapel used the analogy between gender and race to justify exclusion of non-Aryans from pastoral office. Just as Paul, “for very earthly reasons” forbade women to speak in the church, he argued, so German Protestants could “forbid the Jews to speak in our German congregations.”
If there are biological differences of race, why is it invalid to treat people of different races in different ways but valid to treat different sexes in different ways? What arguments are there against differential treatment of various races that don’t also work against differential treatment of the sexes? I’m not sure that there are any. Might this mean, however, that people who accept one are likely to accept the other — that people who accept differential treatment of the sexes are more likely to accept differential treatment of races?
There is certainly strong precedent for a correlation between the two. Is it merely coincidence that the churches in America which have the strongest history of treating men and women differently also have the strongest history of treating the races differently? I doubt that one necessarily entails the other, but I suspect that both stem directly from a refusal to accept the basic equality of all human beings.
It’s not just that they refuse to accept it on a political level, but they refuse to accept it as a theological doctrine, despite its clear and unambiguous expression in their own scriptures. Many Christians have argued their religion provides the only sound basis for democracy and political liberty because it teaches the doctrine of equality of all people. Unfortunately, while this doctrine might exist, it’s certainly not followed or even accepted by all Christians. Some churches appear to make rejection of this doctrine one of the cornerstones of their existence.
American Christians would rightly condemn the discrimination against Jews practiced by the German Christians, but such condemnation would be hypocritical without also condemning the discrimination against and differential treatment of women in American churches. These are both, after all, simply different manifestations of the same problem within Christianity itself.
Read More Book Notes from the Book Reviews on this site.
