This is an essay I wrote for "Nonviolence and Christian Faith in the 20th Century." The historical narrative is interesting... what is more interesting is the implication it has for today's church.
“Hitler had ‘called on the Germans to
fulfill “the mission appointed for them by the Creator of the Universe”’ (
Mein Kampf). Similarly, Dr. Malan as
Prime Minister had seen Afrikanerdom as the ‘creation of God’ and Afrikaner
history as ‘the highest work of art of the Architect of the centuries.’”
There is deep-rooted commonality between the situations in Nazi Germany and
Apartheid South Africa. In addition, the Christian church of the times
responded and was present in each respective situation in comparable ways. In
this essay, I will explore the areas of the church’s involvement, effect, and
influence. First, I will discuss the presence of national churches that
commonly supported the oppressive regimes in Germany and South Africa. Next, I
will consider the church factions that opposed the ruling governments. Third, I
will focus on each government’s resistance and tyranny over the opposing
religious groups and their efforts to remain wholly powerful. Last, I will
examine the aftermath of each situation: how the churches responded once the
oppression was over.
National Churches
South Africa
The churches in South Africa fell into three categories
comparable to those in Nazi Germany: a minority, faithful to the Word of God
and working against the stream of government policies; a silent group condoning
these policies or refusing to recongnise political sin; and finally those who ‘distort
the Word of God’ turning the Gospel into ‘a theological appendage to… the
Government’s nationalist ideology’.
The vast
majority of the Christians in South Africa did not oppose the status quo
instituted by the Apartheid government, at least in any visible or actionable
way. This was an historic product of the marriage of Afrikaner Nationalism and
the DRC. “Given the extent to which Afrikaner nationalism was nurtured within
the womb of the Dutch Reformed Church, its policies both needed and received
its theological sanction. Racial segregation… was decreed to be the will of
God.
This policy has its roots in a religious conference in 1857 that officially
allowed segregation.
As for the Afrikaner people, “many of its leaders studied in Germany in the
inter-war years, and were inspired by the visions of racial purity and divine
vocation that gave rise to Hitler’s Nazism.”
The combination of these forces – the national church and the Afrikaner people
– led to not only apathy, but also a driving force behind the policies of
Apartheid. The Bible was used as a cornerstone for Apartheid, especially the
story of the Tower of Babel: God would punish those who sought racial unity;
God desires separation.
Even those who disagreed found themselves conforming. “The English-speaking
white-controlled churches, although less directly involved in politics, adopted
a complaining but essentially passive mode of relating to the established
culture of white power, economic privilege and the disruption of human
fellowship which was an integral part of apartheid.”
Their adherence and complicity with the policies of apartheid were a kind of
fuel in the apartheid engine.
Germany
In 1933, “a
movement to unite the regional churches into a national Reich Church was
gaining support. Different factions were maneuvering behind the scenes to
select the first Reich bishop and seize the leadership of the various regional
churches in the first national church elections.”
This would have been a uniting of twenty-seven denominations of regional
churches; a Nazi-istic “people’s church.”
The Nazi government realized the threat that would be posed by a divided,
diverse church separate from the regime. They sought to cripple this potential
threat at the onset. Several dissenters responded to this intimidation,
including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who said to “his friend Erwin Sutz.. “the most
sensible people have lost their heads and their entire Bible.””
The German church had mostly conformed in spite of its long-held beliefs. “In a
word, they are blamed for seeking to defend the Church’s existence as an institution at the expense of their
doctrine.”
Later,
in 1939, the German Christian Movement “issued the Godesberg Declaration, which said, “Christianity is the
irreconcilable religious opposite of Judaism.” The declaration also announced
the establishment of the Institute for Research into and Elimination of Jewish
Influence in German Church Life.”
This would result in the “de-Judaization of ecclesiastical life” and “purify”
the church.
The churches remained quiet as a whole, as they were not the targets of
religious persecution to the extent the Jews were and desired to remain in this
“freedom.”
What
was happening to the church (and in fact, the country as a whole) was clearly
unprecedented, and as a result, the church was ill-prepared to respond in any
sort of holistic, unified way.
Opposing Church Factions
South Africa
Several events led to the need for
and creation of an opposing church body in apartheid South Africa, which was
soon embodied as the Christian Institute. Individual prophetic messages were
given against the actions of the apartheid government. “A major example of this
was the condemnation of apartheid and criticism of the DRC made in 1958 by the
somewhat acerbic Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Joost de Blank.”
This was a precursor to further small uprisings and criticism of the oppressive
regime. As small factions began forming and officially protesting the
government’s actions, “the state responded with arrests, treason trials,
repressive legislation and police action, most notoriously at Sharpeville on 21
March 1960.”
This
was the starting point for formal and intentional church action. “The Sharpeville
massacre also pushed the church out of its rather limp-wristed opposition to
apartheid, forced it to focus on its own theological shortcomings, and led it
to engage in over two decades of in-depth ideological critique of Christian
nationalism, apartheid and racism.”
These events were preludes to the creation of the Christian Institute in 1963.
At the formation of the Christian
Institute in 1963, Beyers Naude, the Moderator of the Southern Transvaal Synod
of the NGK, was named Director.
The Christian Institute existed “’to bring together Christians of all
denominations into Christian fellowship to work for greater justice for all
citizens of our land’; it was to ‘give a more visible expression to the
biblical truth of the unity of all Christians, all believers.’”
It was an attempt to bring together people of varying ethnic backgrounds in
common goal. The model was “discussions, analysis and then service.”
At the onset, there were no well-defined goals, only ambitious theories and
desires.
In
1969, one well-defined project was born, called the Study Project on
Christianity in an Apartheid Society (SPROCAS). It was
an elaborate, but
imaginative, attempt to provide facts and analysis which might serve as the
basis for informed critical judgments on public and church policies… it was
hoped that when white South Africans were provided with more information on the
injustices wrought by existing policies, and offered a range of alternative
policies, they would be prompted to take a vigorous stand against apartheid.
Though the institute was eventually
banned, the church continued to play a large role in the resistance against
apartheid. Christians played a dominant role in the United Democratic Front.
“The SACC, under the successive leadership of Desmond Tutu, Frank Chikane and
Beyers Naude, became a key leader of both Christian and popular resistance to
the regime.”
In
1985, the Kairos document was published. “It was a powerful theological
statement against apartheid and the security state, but also against the
failure of the institutional church to be engaged in the struggle for justice.”
The Kairos document was a watershed response to the previous and continuous
failures of the church enumerated b the SPROCAS Church Commission in 1972: “The
attitudes and motives of the members of the Church reflect an ideological
captivity which seriously inhibits the possibility of its fulfilling its
mission in South African society… for the most part the life of the Church
reflects the prevailing social and political attitudes of the country.”
At the onset of the creation of the
Christian Institute, the founding members looked to the past for similarities
to their current plight. “The similarities to the ‘Confessing Church’ in the
struggle against Hitler’s Nazism were consciously explored.”
Germany
In 1933, scattered opposition to the
Nazi regime within the church began to gather more formally. “The birth of the
church opposition movement came from those traditional leaders who were
appalled by the German Christians’ energetic overthrow of the familiar
landmarks of church life.”
The main landmark that thrust the Confessing Church into existence was the racial
discrimination found in the Nazi’s Aryan Paragraph. There were only a few who
resisted this new legislation. “Not surprisingly, the German Christians favored
adopting the state’s racial legislation and officially excluding “non-Aryans”
from the pulpits and unofficially from the pews.”
Under the leadership of Martin Niemoller, carrying the momentum of an
anti-Aryan Paragraph declaration made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to the National
Synod of the German Evangelical Church in Wittenberg, the Pastors’ Emergency
League was established. Their pledge read: “To the best of my ability, I
acknowledge my responsibility for those who are persecuted for the sake of this
confessional position. Through this commitment, I attest that the application
of the Aryan paragraph in the church is a violation of the confessional
position.”
The Pastors’ Emergency League spent much of its time discussing semantics and
details; their resistance was weak. As a result, in 1934, Karl Barth delivered
a poignant lecture that served as a final statement denouncing the Aryan
paragraph. His statement became a basis for the Barmen Doctrine that same year.
Hubert Locke, Director and Senior
Fellow of the William O. Douglas Institute, says this regarding the Barmen
Doctrine:
Throughout the two
thousand year history of Christianity, there have been occasions in which one
segment of the Church has found it necessary to declare other church leaders
and their follower to be in grave error with respect to fundamental Christian
teaching and belief. Such occasions have always been momentous in the life of
the Christian community; in modern times, certainly none has been more so than
that which transpired between May 29 and May 31, 1934 in the town of Barmen.
The
doctrine expressed that the church is not called to conform to the values and
practices of the state and should not glean its ideology from state history,
but only from scripture.
The Barmen doctrine went largely unheeded, and later led to the greater
church’s confession in 1945 at Stuttgart.
This is in part because of the weakness of the Confessing Church. There was
great division in the Confessing Church between its conservative and more
radical segments, leading to differing ideas for action and doctrine.
And when war broke out, there was very little backlash from churches, even
pacifist sects.
These opposing church factions were weakened not only by internal issues, but
also by intimidation from the state.
Persecution/Intimidation of the Church
South Africa
From
a part of the manifesto of the Re-united National Party in South Africa: “The
National Party, anxious to stimulate active Christianising enterprise among the
non-whites, will gladly support the efforts of mission churches. Church and
missions, however, which frustrate the policy of apartheid or which propagate
foreign doctrines, will not be tolerated.”
The regime understood the threat of opposition from the church and sought to
silence it from the onset. The state began taking strange measures against
clergy and Christian organizations, including arrests of those who spoke out
publicly against apartheid, deportations, and random searches.
Though the Christian Institute was not large or overly influential, the state
made priorities to discredit it.
Eventually, in 1977, the Christian Institute was officially banned by the
state.
The regime was winning key ideological battles it seemed. Desmond Tutu
expressed it this way: “Sometimes, when evil seemed to be on the rampage
and about to overwhelm goodness, one had held on to this article of faith by
the skin of one’s teeth. It was a kind of theological whistling in the dark and
one was frequently tempted to whisper in God’s ear, “For goodness’ sake, why
don’t you make it more obvious that you are in charge?”
Germany
When Adolf
Hitler became Reich Chancellor in 1933, there was no established policy
regarding formal relations between the church and state. But it can be inferred
that Hitler rejected any form of Christianity that he knew or had known.
Throughout its existence, the Confession Church’s risk grew increasingly. Many
were arrested (including Bonhoeffer’s famous arrest and execution). There were
bans on travel and speaking.
After the start of the war, an illegal seminary was closed in Berlin.
Church properties were seized in the name of the need for auxiliary hospitals
or miscellaneous needs of the Nazis.
The material existence of the Confessing Church was squashed, but the ideology
and legacy of the movement lasted through the aftermath of the war and in to
the confessional period.
Aftermath
South Africa
Desmond Tutu
says regarding the aftermath of the apartheid regime: “There were those who
wanted to follow the Nuremberg trial paradigm… This, it turned out, was really
not a viable option at all, perhaps mercifully for us in South Africa… Neither
side could impose victor’s justice because neither side won the decisive
victory that would have enabled it to do so.”
Since there was no military victor, the Nuremberg model would be nonsensical. The
Truth and Reconciliation Commission instead sought a third way: “a compromise
between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national
amnesia.”
Though
the TRC process was unique and effective, it was not without its faults. “One
of the most serious lacunae in the TRC process, one beyond the control of the
Commission itself, was the failure of the majority of white South Africans to
become involved or even approve of its work.”
There was a sense of shame, guilt, and scapegoating that many could not face in
order to gain amnesty or participate in the process. DeGruchy says, “Blaming
others and seeking ways to escape the pain and shame of acknowledging guilt
often leads to self-destructive behavior, whereas recognizing and accepting responsibility
for guilt, helps rehumanize both the perpetrator
and the victim.”
There had to be outward confessions for reparation and reconciliation to be
facilitated. Desmond Tutu urged this confession as well, especially of the
national church that upheld the values of apartheid.
But then this Church [the DRC] that had upheld apartheid
theologically for so long abandoned this position. It invited those it had
previously persecuted, those who had witnessed prophetically, to its General
Synod and apologized handsomely and publicly for all it had made them suffer.
It was wonderful to see God’s stalwarts such as Beyers Naude being publicly
vindicated and rehabilitated.
Germany
The
Nuremberg trials were a large part of the aftermath of the Nazi regime, but
there was significant part played by the church in urging and offering
confessions of guilt. “The Stuttgart declaration was not simply an act of
conscience. Persistent pressure by foreign church leaders for formal
recognition of the German Church’s inadequate response to Nazism played a
significant role.”
The Stuttgart confession expressed fault from everyone involved: blindness to
injustice, blatant racism, nonresistance to oppression, and idleness.
The urgency of the Barmen Synod was not heeded. The guilty lament in Stuttgart
was too late. It has often been explored as to why the German churches failed
so horribly to step in. There have been many excuses and theories, but as J.S.
Conway says, “What is not certain, however, is whether the Germans would have
done anything had they been fully aware of the situation. The question raised
by Pastor Maas of the Heidelberg Confessing Church is significant: ‘Was not
what we
did see and hear quite
enough?’”
The final confession in this period was at
the General Synod of the Evangelical Church of Germany in Berlin in 1950, in
which Martin Niemoller and others finally addressed the Jewish question, though
the roots of anti-Semitism were not addressed.
The tenderness of these interactions remains today. In 1989, Desmond Tutu
visited the Holy Land. He took a tour of the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.
Members of the media asked for his impressions. He said, “”But what about
forgiveness?” That remark set the cat among the pigeons. I was roundly
condemned… I was charged with being anti-Semitic.”
Conclusion
I have set
forth here to bring about similarities and detailed contrasts between the
church’s role in apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany. The successes,
missteps, attempts at reconciliation, and lasting hurt are attributes that
Christians of modern history can look to for guidance. These situations were
extreme as well as unique but yet retain the ability to be repeated in future
history. For example, in modern times Desmond Tutu has condemned Israel for
their treatment of Palestine, though he has received nothing but backlash and
dismissal.
The
lessons gleaned from the church’s roles in these regions of the world and time
are timeless; they are entirely necessary to retain and practice the church’s
commitment to peacemaking, justice, and freedom.
Peter Walshe.
Church Versus State in South Africa:
the Case of the Christian Institute. London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 1983, 98. Author’s italics.
Peter Walshe,
Church Versus State in South Africa:
the Case of the Christian Institute. London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 1983, 98.
John W. DeGruchy,
Reconciliation: Restoring Justice. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002, 32.
Hugh McLeod, ed.,
World
Christianities C. 1914-C. 2000. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006,
395.
Peter Walshe,
Church Versus State in South Africa:
the Case of the Christian Institute. London: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 1983, 6.
Wolfgang Gerlach,
And the
Witnesses Were Silent: the Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews.
Edited by Victoria J. Barnett. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000, 19.
Matthew D. Hockenos,
A Church
Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004, 15.
John S. Conway, The
Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933-45. New York: Basic Books, 1968, 45.
Stan Meyer, “Hitler's Theologians: The Genesis of Genocide.” The
Apple of His Eye.
http://www.appleofhiseye.org/Whatdoyouthink/HitlersTheologians/tabid/923/Default.aspx
(accessed May 1, 2012).
James Irvin Lichti,
Houses On
the Sand?: Pacifist Denominations in Nazi Germany. New York: Peter Lang
Publishing, 2008, 33.
Peter Randall, ed.
Apartheid
and the Church: Report of the Spro-Cas Church Commission. Johannesburg:
Christian Institute of South Africa, 1972, 18.
Hubert G. Locke,
The Barmen
Confession: Papers from the Seattle Assembly. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen
Pr, 1987, x.
Shelley Baranowski,
The
Confessing Church, Conservative Elites, and the Nazi State. Lewiston, N.Y.:
Edwin Mellen Pr, 1986, 57-58.
Brian Stanley,
Missions,
Nationalism, and the End of Empire. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2004, 54.
Desmond Tutu, No
Future Without Forgiveness. New York: Doubleday, 1999, 4.
John W. DeGrucy,
Reconciliation: Restoring Justice. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002,
190.
