There has always been this conflict over religion and fascism that when posited, by the liberal, individualist tradition, notably by a Christopher Hitchens or Slvaj Zizek, there is connection invoked between the two; part of the popular secular culture dialog that lumps faith with fascism with secular, atheists in many cases as the good guys riding off in the sunset with the beautiful girl. A typical misrepresentation is Hitchens calling G.K. Chesterton, “shady on fascism,” and the overall smear campaign against Pius XII which extends into the realm of incredulity that deigns to lump Naziism as some form of religious heresy.
---The Annunciation by Fra Filippo Lippi, c. 1450---Arguably, no subject has been more profoundly felt and more beautifully handled by the old painters, nor more vilely mishandled by the moderns than the Annunciation, of all the scenes in the life of Mary. Considered merely as an artistic subject, it is surely eminently beautiful: it places before us the two most graceful forms which the hand of man was ever called on to delineate; the winged spirit fresh from paradise ; ...Read More:http://freechristimages.org/Luke1/annunciation_art.htm
The concept that Christianity was complicit with the rise and expansion of Naziism is based on a swirling context of significant forces. When a Dawkins or Hitchens spread the gospel of the danger of religious faith, they mean essentially Christianity or Islam. Since the Nazis engaged in the final solution, it is assumed that this anti-semitism was rooted in Christian bigotry and although there were exceptions, their theories are error riddled, near demagogue styled populism running against proof that Christianity was a defense against dictatorship. Their whole argument that religion is responsible for all war is rubbish, on par with Hitchen’s argument that somehow Hitler remained true to Catholicism and was not an atheist.
---Gustaf von Haften refused to join the so-called "German Christian" Church established by the Nazis and at great personal risk belonged to the real Christian Church, the Confessing Church. He supported the attempt to overthrow Hitler and, like all the other Christian martyrs, intervened whenever he could to protect Jews, to protest Nazi anti-Semitic policies and to help Jews escape. --- Read More:http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/christian_opposition_to_nazi_a.html
The difficulty of the German Christians was that Hitler had been voted in legally within the terms of the constitution, which meant that his government was ostensibly legitimate; at least until he went full-Roman and Augustus style became a pagan god, “a jealous god” to spike the Hebrew punch bowl,and cult of the leader which in sum, as “fuehrer” was not a recognized post and fair game for dissent among Christians.
Ludwig Muller. 1933. Read More:http://romanchristendom.blogspot.ca/2010/01/face-it-reverend-ray-protestant-areas.html
ADDENDUM:
( Hitler): “The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity!”
“Christianity is a prototype of Bolshevism: the mobilisation by the Jew of the masses of slaves with the object of undermining society. Thus one understands that the healthy elements of the Roman world were proof against this doctrine.”
“Pure Christianity – the Christianity of the catacombs – is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.”…
---Protestant Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller willingly and openly acted as Hitler's Bishop for the Third Reich in marked distinction to the Catholic Church which always opp
the Nazi regime---Read More:http://romanchristendom.blogspot.ca/2010_01_01_archive.html“Our epoch will certainly see the end of the disease of Christianity. It will last another hundred years, two hundred years perhaps.”
“The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity….
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( see link at end) …It is immediately obvious that majority Catholic areas didn’t vote for Hitler whereas majority Protestant areas did.
Yet Protestant liars persist with the outright fib that Bavaria voted for Hitler. The truth is the exact opposite: Catholic Bavaria rejected Hitler, as did the Catholic Rhineland, and the Catholic parts of Westphalia and Silesia.
Remarkably, it is a nearly exact fit.
The Protestant areas, by contrast, are exactly the areas where the Nazis gained their votes. The only dot of white in the Nazi-voting Protestant areas is Berlin, for the reasons already mentioned.Read More:http://romanchristendom.blogspot.ca/2010_01_01_archive.html
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---The European artists of the Renaissance have a lot to do with mainstream idea that Jesus had a pale skin. Below is a depiction of Christ by Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431 – September 13, 1506). He was a Italian Renaissance painter. In reality Jesus probably looked like a typical Semitic (Arabs and Jews)/ Middle Eastern person with a swarthy skin and black hair. Read more: Why do so many people think Jesus had pale skin? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1946161#ixzz1w2exjZHP---
At the beginning of the twentieth century the German Evangelical (Protestant) Church was a loose confederation of regional Lutheran, Reformed and United churches. It had a long tradition of nationalism and loyalty to state authority. Like most of the German population, Protestants were tired of the political turbulence of the Weimar years. They feared the threat of Communism, and, in light of their defeat during World War I, they resented other European countries. By 1933, with the installation of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, many German Protestant leaders were ready to welcome the new Nazi government. They believed that Adolf Hitler would be a strong leader who could revive Germany’s economic stability and national pride. Many aspects of Nazi ideology, including its nationalism, anti-Semitism and emphasis on traditional values appealed to German Protestants.
But the Protestant Church would soon prove to be a stumbling block to Hitler’s plans to “nazify” German society, including its churches. The reason was a reaction to the emergence of the Deutsche Christen (German Christian) church, a nationalistic Protestant group that identified with Nazi ideology and hoped to create a national Reich Church that would embody Nazi ideals. The German Christians won the national church elections in July 1933 and quickly tried to enforce their agenda, which included the adoption of “Aryan laws” within the church (permitting only racially pure Germans to hold church positions) and the eradication of all Jewish influences from Christian scriptures, liturgies and hymns.
If they agreed with many of the political aims of the Nazi regime, many Protestant clergy and leaders nevertheless found the German Christian agenda to be ideologically tainted and anti-Christian. A new movement emerged, led by prominent preachers and theologians like Martin Niemoeller and Karl Barth, that opposed the German Christians: the Confessing Church. Founded on the principle that a truly Christian church would not succumb to the demands of political ideology, the Confessing Church argued that the principles of belief were to be found in the scriptures, not in Nazi laws, and that the head of the Church was Christ, not a political Fuhrer. These convictions placed the Confessing Church on a collision course not only with the German Christians, but with the Nazi dictatorship itself. Read More:http://www.bonhoeffer.com/bak1.htm
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Geary:Although Hitler’s political career began in Munich, in the elections of 1928 to November 1932 the NSDAP won a higher share of the vote in Protestant than in Catholic Germany. In the Catholic Rhineland and Bavaria (apart from Protestant Franconia) it polled disproportionately badly. In fact in July 1932 the Nazi share of the vote was almost twice as high in Protestant as in Catholic areas. The inability, of Nazis to attract the Catholic vote was demonstrated by the stable support for the Catholic Centre Party, which regularly gained between 11.8 and 12.5 per cent between 1928, and November 1932; and by that of its sister confessional party, the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), which stayed firm at around 3 per cent in those same elections.
In some places, of course, the NSDAP mobilised Catholic voters on a significant scale, as happened in Breslau and Liegnitz (towns in Silesia where conflicts between Germans and Poles coloured political identity), in the Catholic rural areas of the Palatinate, and among some Catholics in the Black Forest; but these cases were atypical.Read More:http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar6_Geary.htm
…The National Socialists also won the backing of significant numbers of Protestants from both the upper middle class and the manual working class. There is considerable evidence, for example, of Nazi voting on the part of Protestants living in some of the wealthiest districts of Hamburg and Berlin. This, together with the voting returns from upper-class holiday resorts and even cruise liners, indicates that sections of the upper middle class also voted for Hitler at the height of the economic and political crisis of 1932; such support had been withheld earlier, and party membership among this group still remained a rarity.( ibid.)
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