But, before closing the book on Dr. Kennedy's dreadfully dishonest diversion, a few words about how Hitler actually came to power appear to be in order. For they help to explain what Dr. Kennedy and Ann Coulter really are up to.
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.
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
In the US there is a general disease of supremacy, the idea that ' the US people are better than anyone else'. The cancerous guys, the ones described above speculate on that. If the US people had a different mentality they would rightfully say that Nazis were people and people have a tendency to use anything in their disposal to get to their little goals. Moreover, we here are also people and we here are not immune from that. Having said that to connect Darwin to Hitler is the same as to connect the inventor of the wheel to the perpetrators of the ' wheeling'- the horrible Middle Ages form of execution. It is just pure demagoguery. In fact, demagoguery in all forms is much more close to Nazis than any evolutionary school of thought. The situation above described is a cancane of ignorance, the witch coven shabash, but due to the simple bacteria of US supremacy it works like a charm.
The problem is with us.
by
Mark Sashine (46 articles, 19 quicklinks, 235 diaries, 3358 comments)
on Monday, August 28, 2006 at 12:23:57 PM
Dear Mr. Uhler,
I am no fan of Dr. D. James Kennedy; however, I have studied the Holocaust well over forty years. Kennedy is probably coming up with this idea from the turn of the century philosopher, Chamberlain, who rated the races from one to ten. Jews and Blacks were the last in the link from animal to man. Chamberlain believed that as mankind evolved, the top of the evolutionary chain was the Aryan race which included Great Britain. Chamberlain was no great philosopher or sociologist, but Hitler depended on his writings to defend his belief that Jews were physiologically inferior. Hitler was very upset at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. If you will remember, the black American, Jesse Owens, set record after Olympic record while trouncing the Aryan blonde headed Germans. Owens took the theory of physical superiority of the Nazis and buried it in the garbage pile where it belonged.
Kennedy has made the grave, even gross error of trying to combine Church (religion) and State. He with such men as Dr. James Dobson (Focus on the Family), Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and many of the mega church ministers have turned modern Christianity into a caucus for the Republican Party. They have used the excesses of the sixties with the emphasis on lawlessness, broken marriages, pornography, drugs, anti-patriotism and sexual immorality to paint the left as nothing less than demonic. By and large most of America believes in traditional family, hates pornography, broken marriages, lawlessness and drugs. Those who go to church believe their ministers will honestly deliver God's message. They are being fooled big-time.
The great problem is that the American people find themselves in the same place England found herself at the turn of the eighteenth century. The church was preaching one thing and doing something entirely different by becoming the handmaid for the rich. William Blake (1803) began the hundred year change as the father of Romanticism. His Proverbs of Heaven and Hell opens the door for men like Dickens to follow with stories like Oliver Twist. When you read Blake's Poems of Innocence and his Poems of Experience you are reading the strongest indictment of English government and church ever written.
It took writers and Singers like Woodiy Guthrie and Pete Seeger to bring about the changes in the 1930's in the United States. Guthrie and Seeger wrote such songs as "Washington Breakdown," "Dear Mr. President," "C for Conscription," "Which Side Are You On?" "Young Man Who Wouldn't Hoe Corn," "Talking Dust Bowl Blues," "If I Had a Hammer," "Turn, Turn, Turn," "We Shall Overcome (not written by Seeger but words updated by him),"Where Have All the Flowers Gone," "Talking Union." "This Land Is Your Land."
Seeger and Guthrie were staunch anti-fascists and so strongly pro-Union that Guthrie was black listed as a Communist by the House of Un-American Activities. The charge was true. Seeger was a Communist until 1950. Seeger made a wonderful statement before Congress for which he was indicted for contempt of Congress in 1957, "I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this." You think this is the first time the American public has been hoodwinked and boons waggled? Not by any means. Seeger was found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail in 1961. It makes me sick to hear the Bush crowd and the near- Nazi Country and Western clowns claim Guthrie and Seeger as their heroes. If Guthrie and Seeger went to Hell when they died, Hell has a problem because they would be turning over in their graves so fast the place would be air-conditioned; however, as much as the Falwells and Kennedys hate Guthrie and Seeger, both men were likely Christians, and especially Woody Guthrie who wrote "Gimme That Old Time Region."
My problem with many writers today on rob@opednews.com is that they paint with too broad a brush. I read article after article condemning any and all Christians. What a shame. I am over sixty-five years old. I have never voted for anyone but a Democrat since I voted for JFK in my first election. I cannot trust the lies I hear from all politicians but I know what the Party to which they belong believes.
I am a traditional Democrat. I am pro-union, against the death penalty, for such things as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and think it is criminal that we do not have a single-pay health policy in this country. I am one of the few Southern Baptist ministers who demonstrated in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. Much to the chagrin of many of my fellow Southern Baptist ministers, I have been for forty-four years and am still active as a Southern Baptist minister. My life is based on a single supposition that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, and the Bible is my sole standard of all my faith and practice. My political liberalism seems to disqualify me from being a "good" Southern Baptist with many of my Baptist friends, and my religious conservatism seems to disqualify me from being a "good" liberal with my liberal friends. My answer is simple, "Go to any good electronic Bible such as Blue Letter Bible, Google it in, under search you can type "poor," "helpless," "needy," "widow," and "fatherless;" then you may type in such words as "wealthy" and "rich." Note how many pages you get under the former words and notice that you will have trouble filling out one page under the latter words and most of the verse will be negative. To hear Falwell and the mega church ministers, it is the poor man who will find it easier to go through the eye of a needle than to enter Heaven. It is getting to the place it is easier for a poor man to go through the eye of a needle than to get inside one of their churches-not all churches, but the mega-churches. Try typing in such words as "kill," "murder," and "execute." You will find no where in all the New Testament from Matthew the first book through Revelation the last book, that there is one verse where a Christian is ever permitted to kill another human being for any reason whatsoever. Conclusion: It would seem that I am more Biblical than my Bible thumping brothers I call the "fighting fundies" or the "FunDAMmentalist." No brag, just fact. They have hijacked my denomination as Bush has hijacked my government and I am more than just a little upset.
Phil.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 945 comments)
on Monday, August 28, 2006 at 11:12:36 PM