A visit to Berlin and another aspect of ‘It could happen here‘

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Ron Way’s reflections in “A visit to Auschwitz and the thoughts that can’t be ignored,” Sept. 3 — particularly “the alarming normalization of disinformation and outright lies [which he sees] in America’s public discourse” — are a powerful reminder that his late German mother-in-law was right: “It could happen here.”

My own visit to Berlin this past summer, while not as dramatic as a visit to Auschwitz, nevertheless brought home the realities of the horror and destructive nature of Nazism and its impact on Germany and on the world.

Another dimension of this reality is the complicity of the German Christians, the official church in Germany at the time. Many religious leaders and theologians considered Hitler to be Germany’s savior, the rising sun, the one who, messiah-like, would restore Germany’s fortunes. Once again, to quote Way’s late mother-in-law, “It could happen here.” The rise of Christian nationalism in our own nation today proves her right.

In May 1934, a group of dissenting pastors and theologians gathered in Barmen-Wuppertal, Germany, to intentionally state their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and reject the “worship” of Hitler as idolatry. This Barmen Declaration was a powerful affirmation of the central beliefs of Christianity. Its primary author, Swiss theologian Karl Barth, was one of the most prominent Christian voices of the early 20th century. One flaw in this document, which Barth later acknowledged, was the absence of any reference to the suffering of the Jews and their rejection in favor of a purely Aryan race, i.e., white supremacy. “It could happen here.”

In his book “Christians Against Christianity,” Obery M. Hendricks Jr. of Columbia University states that “Right-wing evangelicals have evolved what might be called a ‘Jesus personality cult’ that is obsessed with the person of Jesus as spiritual savior rather than with the principles for justly living in the world that he taught and died for.” Their misunderstanding of Jesus weakens his radical theology of caring for the poor and vulnerable. Keeping Jesus caged in the strictly personal salvation mode ignores his teaching about justice and God’s intention for humanity and all creation. As a Jew, Jesus’s teaching comes from the rich tradition of the Hebrew Scriptures where the prophets insist that God charges the people to care for the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the alien in the land — all those in that time who had no voice and who suffered under the oppression of the elite and powerful. Jesus remembers this commitment to the most vulnerable: “When you do this to the least of these, you do it to me.”

Ninety years ago, the German Christians lost sight of that biblical imperative. The same is in danger of happening in the American church today among those who equate their Christianity with a nationalism that denies the heart of the gospel. Yes, it could happen here. Our faith calls us to speak out against a narrow, misguided understanding of what it means to follow Jesus that is more punitive than merciful, centered on personal gain and lust for power to the exclusion of social justice, and driven by fear and anger rather than the commandment to love.

The Rev. Katherine S. Michael, of Edina, is a retired Presbyterian minister.