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Kenneth Plank
Dr. Bruce P. Rittenhouse
Religion 3360
5/5/2016
The Responsibility of Protestants in the United States
Judging by the history of Protestant Christianity and the thinkers discussed in this course,
US Protestants have a responsibility to both the Jewish and Muslim communities of the United
States. The way that the German Protestant churches responded to Nazi rule and the Holocaust
was a moral failure. German churches, broadly speaking, were at best complicit with the removal
of Jews, and at worst were supporters of the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority. The moral
failures of the German churches should not be repeated in the United States. First, an overview
of how the German churches responded to the Holocaust, and how it is possible that US churches
could have a similar response to the inclusion of Muslims in US society.
The German churches perceived threats to Christianity and the German state in the time
between World War I and World War II. The rise of communism threatened to spread atheism.
There was also the belief that the The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a factual document,
showing that the Jews intended to use the Bolshevik Revolution as a means to take over the
world. The Weimar Republic had replaced the German monarch. Lastly, Jews and other internal
“enemies” were blamed for the Treaty of Versailles (Rubenstein and Roth, 251-252). Similarly,
there are perceived threats on Christianity in the United States. A vocal minority of Christians
treat any inclusivity of homosexual or transgender people as an attack on Christian moral values.
Secular approaches to Christmas celebrations are reported on the news as the “War on
Christmas.” In terms of threats to the United States, immigrants from Mexico seen, again by a

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vocal minority, as stealing jobs. Refugees from the Middle East are feared as potential terrorists.
Unlike the US, however, Germany had an established tradition of a state church. The 29
churches of the German states were unified under the Nazis as the Reichskirche, the single
national church of Germany. The United States, meanwhile, has a separation of church and state.
However, one does not have to go far into United States history to see that, for many Americans,
Christian and American identity are closely tied to one another. American society in the 1950s
put a particularly strong emphasis on this connection in response to the Second Red Scare.
Therefore, the social situations of Germany between world wars and America now are similar
enough to raise concerns, even though history is not exactly repeating itself.
In Germany, the Deutsche Christen, an alliance of grassroots organizations within the
Reichskirche, had important points of agreement with the Nazi party. Both took the stance that
Jews needed to be removed from Germany. The Deutsche Christen supported the Nazi myth of
the Aryan race and its superiority over all other races (Rubenstein and Roth, 254-256). They
called Jesus an “Aryan at war with the Jews” (Rubenstein and Roth, 257). The Deutsche
Christen pledged loyalty to Hitler, viewing his Nationalist Socialism as the “true understanding
of the Christian faith” (Solberg, 18). Emanuel Hirsch, the theological advisor to the Deutsche
Christen, emphasized the importance of the importance of German nationalist and ethnic
identity, arguing that the church should be shaped by this identity (Solberg, 109-111). Reinhold
Krause pushes this same idea, claiming that it was an is Martin Luther’s desire “to lead the way
to the German God and the German Church” (Solberg, 252). This ignores that Luther’s theology
favored “two kingdoms,” in which the state and church govern themselves separately. Krause
refers to Luther as a “German fighter” who “was always on the side of the values of German
ethno-national identity [deutsche Volkstum] in language and customs, in home and family, in

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poetry and music” (Solberg, 253). It should be noted that calling Luther “German” is a bit
misleading, since there was not a united German state at the time Luther lived. While Luther
translated the Bible into German, it likely had less to do with favoring Germanness, and more to
do with the fact that this was the language people around him spoke and understood. There is
nothing to suggest that Martin Luther preferred German ethnic and national identity, or that he
even thought of Germanness in those terms. However, despite the factual flaws in Krause’s
argument, the Deutsche Christen maintained “administrative and theological control of the
German Protestant Church and the hearts and minds of its members,” winning out over the
Confessing Church (Solbeg, 20).
The Confessing Church unlike the Deutsche Christen, rejected Nazi racial policies.
However, the Confessing Church was formed by 6000 pastors not for the purpose of opposing
Nazi rule entirely, but to keep the church from being subordinate to the state (Rubenstein and
Roth, 259). Although, some leaders of the Confessing Church did speak outright against the
persecution of Jews. Karl Barth’s sermon “Jesus was a Jew” was one such instance of defiance
of Nazi racial policy (Rubenstein and Roth, 260). Barth opposed the Nazis much more fiercely
than most other pastors in the Confessing Church, refusing to take a loyalty oath. On the other
hand, Barth also believed that the Holocaust was divine punishment for the Jews rejecting Jesus
(Rubenstein and Roth, 261).
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the other major leader of the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer
went even further in defiance than Barth by being involved in an assassination plot against Adolf
Hitler (Rubenstein, Roth, 262). In Letters and Papers from Prison, he writes that “the church is
the church only when it exists for others” (382). He opposed the Deutsche Christen idea that the

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church was meant to serve the state. Rather, in his view, the church should serve all people, and
it should do so not through “abstract argument, but example” (383).
In Ethics, Bonhoeffer writes of six failed ethical responses to the situation in Germany.
These same failures could be easily be repeated to the present situation in the United States,
regarding the inclusion of Muslims in our society. The first is reasonableness (78). The desire to
to be fair to both sides is of limited use in regards to the inclusion of Muslims, because one side
wishes to not include Muslims in society at all. This makes for an irreconcilable difference. If
one does not choose a side, then in Bonhoeffer’s words “they withdraw in resignation or fall
helplessly captive to the stronger party” (78). Both options lead to a moral loss.
Second is moral purity. We face this problem at the moment with the upcoming
presidential election. Some would rather not vote at all if they cannot vote for their preferred
candidate in the general election. However, when a presidential candidate is spouting hateful
rhetoric against Muslims and Syrian refugees, then to not act against him by voting against it is
to be complicit with his words. In Bonhoeffer's words, “though their fanaticism serves the lofty
goals of truth or justice, sooner or later they are caught in small and insignificant things and fall
into the net of their more clever opponent” (78).
When Bonhoeffer discusses the ethical failure of conscience refers to making
compromises to “content [oneself] with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience”
(79). It’s the mentality that it’s okay that “random” searches at the airport just happen to
disproportionately affect people of Middle Eastern heritage because that supposedly keeps the
United States safe. That’s it’s okay for certain places in France to ban hijabs because it makes
people feel better. We see this ethical failure on a daily basis.

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Conscience can tie in with the ethical failure of duty, as well. A governor must say that
he won’t let Syrian refugees into his state because it is his duty to protect the people of his state.
Is this mentality any different from German officials who were complicit in killing Jews under
the misguided belief that it was all to protect Aryan Germans?
The ethical failure of freedom is one we see frequently in the United States, due to the
importance of freedom of speech in American society. Donald Trump, and man who is a
presidential candidate, is allowed to say hateful things that stir up angry voters because he is free
to do so. If people try to obstruct him, it can be denounced as inhibiting his freedom of speech, or
inhibiting the freedom of his voters to vote for whoever they wish. However, Nazi Germany
shows what can happen when one man is given the freedom to do whatever he wishes. Limiting
freedom is seen by many Americans as the worst evil. However, as Bonhoeffer states,” hey will
easily consent to the bad, knowing full well that it is bad, in order to prevent the worse, and no
longer will be able to recognize that precisely the worse choice they wish to avoid may be the
better one” (80).
“In flight from public controversy this person or that reaches the sanctuary of a private
virtuousness,” Bonhoeffer writes (80). Private virtue may be one of the most dangerous ethical
failures that Bonhoeffer references. If one is convinced of their own virtue, then what can’t be
justified? Furthermore, there are many people who believe that as long as they are not personally
hateful towards Muslims, then Islamophobia isn’t a problem. It is something that will just go
away as time marches on. Yet, a similar thing was assumed of slavery, which ultimately only
ended after a civil war.
Bonhoeffer says of that church that “it’s first concern is not with the so-called religious
functions of human beings, but with the existence in the world of whole human beings in all their

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relationships” (97). He does not specify relationships with other Christians, but, rather all
humans. This is the ideal that US churches must live up to. US Protestant churches can do well
in responding to the debate about the inclusion of Muslims in US society but acknowledging that
the ethical failures pointed out by one of their faith’s own theologians have come to haunt us
again in the present day.
Johann Baptist Metz gives further precedent for acknowledging that these past failures
have returned. Metz argues for a morale awareness, which “means that we can only mourn
history and win from it standards for our own action when we neither deny the defeats present
within it nor gloss over its catastrophes” (18). Protestants must acknowledge the failures of other
Protestants in the past, so that they can learn and improve. Though Metz is a Catholic theologian,
the Protestant Deutsche Christen had the same issue of being complicit with the Nazi Party that
the Catholic Church did. Arguably more so, since the Deutsche Christen actively supported the
Nazis. Thus US Protestants today have a responsibility to remember the moral failures of the
Deutsche Christen, and to learn from them. Bonhoeffer holds a similar sentiment, claiming that
this remembrance is something commanded by Jesus: “The sayings of Jesus Christ are . . . The
interpretation of his existence, and thus the interpretation of that reality in which history finds its
fulfillment. They are the divine commandment for responsible action in history” (263-264).
“It is . . . [the] bond of life to human beings and to God that constitutes the
freedom of our own life” (Bonhoeffer, 257). Once again, Bonhoeffer does not specify
Christians and non-Christians. Bonhoeffer argues that Christians have a responsibility to
humanity. “Christ does not want us to be first of all pupils, representatives and advocates
of a particular doctrine, but human beings, real human beings before God. Christ did not,
like an ethicist, love a theory about the good; he loved real people” ( Bonhoeffer, 98).

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Thus Protestants have a responsibility to protect Muslims in the United States today,
where Protestants failed to do so in the past for Jews.
In regards to the Jewish community in America, it is similarly important to remember the failures
of the past. It is also important to remember that, while the US is not in the same state of anti-
Semitism as 1940s Europe, the US is far from free of hate for the Jews. Thus, for that reason, US
Protestants should be just as vigilant against anti-Semitism as it should against Islamophobia.
While Bonhoeffer calls for drastic measures in response to drastic circumstances, the US, so far,
has not quite reached that point. It is important that US Protestants act before the US reaches that
point. Though the Deutsche Christen as a group morally failed, there were many individual
Christians who sheltered or hid Jews, or spoke out against the Nazis. These Christians should be
the model for US Christians today.

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Works Cited
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. London: Collins, 1960. Print.
Metz, Johann-Baptist. “Christians and Jews after Auschwitz.” In The Emergent Church: The
Future of Christianity in a Postbourgeios World, 17-33. New York: Crossroad, 1981.
Rubenstein, Richard L., and John K. Roth. Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its
Legacy. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987. Print.
Solberg, Mary M. A Church Undone: Documents from the German Christian Faith Movement,
1932-1940. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987. Print.