Readers of the renowned historian Fritz Stern know that one of the historic developments that "had a special bearing on the vulnerability of Germans to National Socialism" was the "silent secularization" of German evangelical Protestantism. [Stern, Dreams and Delusions, p. 135]
According to Professor Stern, throughout the nineteenth century, "the awe once reserved for the worship of the divine came to be associated with this world's institutions and practices." Thus, "the Protestant ministry became the king's spiritual guard; it exalted king, nation, Volk...God was the guarantor of the nation's ever-growing power and importance. God had given Germany its victory in 1871 and Church and Monarch routinely implored and expected divine blessings on a Germanic Christian State." [Ibid, p. 137]
Consequently, German Protestants were devastated by their country's defeat in World War I. And, to add insult to their post-war personal hardships, evangelical Protestants had to endure the despicably weak democratic liberalism of the Weimar Republic, which made a point of separating church and state. [Ibid, p140]
For Germany's Nazis, as for Dr. Kennedy and especially Ms. Coulter today, "liberalism was the chief enemy." [Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, p. 295] And like Dr. Kennedy and Ms. Coulter today, the Nazis emphasized its "cultural rottenness and political irresponsibility." [Ibid, p. 292]
According to Stern, beyond their mutual disdain for liberalism, "There were many reason why Protestants in particular were disproportionately drawn to Hitler, but we know from individual witnesses that his pseudo-religious, chiliastic promises attracted them far more than any other part of his rhetoric." [Stern, Dreams and Delusions, p. 145] So much, then, for Darwin's Deadly Legacy.
Finally, readers of Dr. Gregory A. Boyd's book, The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, might see parallels between Hitler's appeal to secularized German Protestants and the appeal of Dr. Kennedy and Ms. Coulter to evangelical Protestants in America today.
According to Dr. Boyd, the senior pastor of the Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, "For some evangelicals, the kingdom of God is largely about, if not centered on, 'taking America back for God,' voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, defending political freedom at home and abroad, keeping the phrase 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance, fighting for prayer in the public schools and at public events, and fighting to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings." [p. 11]
Yet, in Boyd's view, "this perspective is misguided" because the "fusing together [of] the kingdom of God with this or any other version of the kingdom of the world is idolatrous." Or as Stern might call it, "silent secularization." Moreover, Pastor Boyd believes that "this fusion is having serious negative consequences for Christ's church and for the advancement of God's kingdom." [Ibid]
You might keep both Professor Stern's and Pastor Boyd's warnings in mind the next time a scapegoating Christian Supremacist teams up with a horse-faced intellectual slut to advance their crackpot Christianity and obnoxious conservatism.
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