The striking parallels between Germany in the 1930s and the United States today keep piling up.
In January a movement called Faithful America began to mobilize Christians in opposition to presidential candidate Donald Trump. These American Catholics and their ecumenical allies were responding directly to Catholic bishops openly supporting Trump.
This replicates the Pastors Emergency League (PEL) formed in 1933 by Martin Niemöller and his clerical colleagues in Germany’s churches. The PEL opposed church leaders proclaiming God sent Adolf Hitler to save Germany.
Germany then, America now
The scenarios are near identical. In both pre-war Germany and the USA in the 2020s, large swathes of the population were in the thrall of a leader who advocated white supremacy, blamed social problems on migrants and embraced easily-debunked falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
Swastikas and other Nazi symbols were proudly displayed, and hate crimes aimed at ethnic minorities, synagogues and other places of non-Christian worship surged.
Hitler and Trump alike relished public displays of adoration, claimed they were not subject to criminal laws, and sought loyalty to himself personally rather than to the party or the nation.
Both leaders had trouble with the courts of law before seeking high office, Hitler over a failed coup and Trump over business fraud and sexual abuse. Both described people they despised as vermin, urged supporters to attack opponents physically, and favored locking up political enemies who had not broken the law and releasing political supporters who had.
They both denigrated democratic elections, and publicly humiliated senior military leaders and department heads following policy disagreement.
In both nations, many professing Christians strongly supported the leader, sparking hurtful divisions.
There are, of course, significant differences. The German churches had moved to expel all pastors of Jewish descent, which thankfully American churches have not done.
Opposition to the pro-Trump Christians
The Faithful America movement sees itself as “organizing the faithful to challenge Christian nationalism and white supremacy and to renew the church's prophetic role in building a more free and just society.”
Organizers claim an ally in the current pope: “When bishops embrace discrimination and partisanship, we stand with our plurality Catholic members to hold the U.S. hierarchy accountable to the inspiring words of Pope Francis.”
Their activism is not directed only at Catholics. “We're sticking up for courageous Christian voices acting for fairness and freedom in every denomination ... and upholding the Gospel's values of love, equality, and dignity.”
This movement mirrors the passion of Lutheran minister Martin Niemöller who watched support for Adolf Hitler’s nationalism expand rapidly within Catholic and Protestant churches in the 1930s.
Safeguarding the mission of the church
In June 1937 Niemöller asked these questions of his Berlin congregation: “It is not a case now – though we repeat it a thousand times – of: ‘What benefits the nation, the German nation, is right; what I regard as right is right.’ It is God who now asks the question: ‘What is right or wrong? What is good or evil? What does the living God say about it? What does He want from us?”
The answers, according to Niemöller, demanded opposing the Nazis, despite the risks:
“I have to tell you that to-day once again as plainly as I can, for who knows what next Sunday may bring forth? But it is our duty to speak: on this charge of ours depends the promise, it depends upon it whether God will keep His word and keep alive the light ...”
Just twelve days after that sermon, on 1 July 1937, the Gestapo arrested Niemöller and imprisoned him for eight years. Significantly, his protests before his arrest had only been at Hitler’s meddling in church affairs, not at the authoritarianism or the atrocities against Jews or other minorities. That came later, towards the end of his imprisonment.
Niemöller initially supported Hitler’s election in 1933 and commended his fanatical nationalism. But by the end of hostilities in Europe in 1945, having seen the monstrous evils of Hitler’s regime, Niemöller had changed his views dramatically.
In fact, his famous quote – “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist ...” – was an admission not of timidity or indifference, but of complicity.
Finding comfort and forgiveness
After his liberation, Niemöller called Christians to repent.
“We, that is the Church, have failed for we knew the wrong and the right path, but we did not warn the people and allowed them to rush forward to their doom. I do not exclude myself from this guilt; on the contrary, I stress at every opportunity that I too have failed, for I too have been silent when I should have spoken!”
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This is an edited version of an article published yesterday in The Christian Messenger, available in full here for free:
https://www.christianmessenger.in/martin-niemollers-urgent-message-to-american-christians-today/