It is beyond obvious now that the contemporary visible “Conservative” church in America has been co-opted by what we are calling, “The post-war consensus.” As I argued yesterday, Christianity has been reinterpreted through the post-war consensus filter with the result that “conservative” Christianity is no longer particularly conservative nor especially Christian.
This brings us to the realization that regardless of how exacting people in general and clergy in particular are in their formal theology proper that does not necessarily translate as those people practicing Biblical Christianity. Clearly, we are seeing that people and clergy can speak in erudite tones about soteriology, hamartiology, pneumatology, eschatology, ecclesiology, Christology and still be absolutely clueless about what Christianity looks like in concrete, rubber meets the road, kind of ways. Anybody who can praise, for example, a Winston Churchill, or a Martin Luther King, or a Abraham Lincoln at the very least has not learned a fundamental basic of Christianity which is to “hate that which is evil and to cling that which is good.” How can one be thought of as “Christian” when they call good “evil” and evil “good?” I don’t care how much exegetical work you can do on Scripture if you can’t distinguish the overtly obvious goats from the overtly obvious sheep.
We have discovered that there is huge disconnect between Christianity in the abstract and Christianity in the concrete and along the way we have discovered that there are legions of those, within Evangelicalism currently who are reputed to be pillars in the Church yet have nigh unto zero ability to think Christianly in a concrete fashion.
This in turn reveals the necessity to once again to teach Christianity as a world and life view and not merely as a set of abstract concepts that allow one to “be on their way to heaven” regardless of the horrendous views they hold on any number of other subjects. This is not adding anything to fact that Christ alone saves. It is merely an argument that when Jesus Christ saves the sanctification process includes incrementally learning to think in ways that do not praise the sons of Belial (for example Churchill) while condemning the works of the righteous (for example Godfrey of Bouillon). It’s hard to take someone’s Christianity seriously if they are praising as “great” a man who proposed dropping anthrax cakes across Germany in order to murder millions of Germans or who eventually approved of the Morgenthau plan which proposed the same kind of death and mayhem. Yet, over the last few days we’ve seen numerous of those reputed to be pillars in the Church step up to the mic and do just that.
Obviously, then, we have to say that there is such a thing as a Biblical view of history and while it certainly would be possible to be overly punctilious as to what the Christian view of history may or may not be in every instance clearly history done from a Christian world and life view does not allow us to sing the praises of the wicked. Can we not agree that anybody in the Church that praises mass murderers as great men ought to be set aside, if not formally by excommunication, then at least informally by marking out such a man as one to warn people against?
Given the trajectory we are on, I want to go on record as saying I will never praise Robespierre, or Mao, or Stalin, or Castro, Lincoln, or Genghis Khan as great men. (This is me trying to get ahead of where this curve is going.) Neither will I praise the French Revolution, nor the “Great Leap Forward,” nor “The Killing Fields” in Cambodia as Great Christian enterprises.
We should end with a plea that the church would be released from its post-war consensus captivity. We should pray that people would realize that just as one cannot say they love God while hating their brother, neither can they say they love God while praising those who hate God and His people. We should realize that Christianity is a totalistic religion that is inclusive of owning a Worldview that understands that history can be either “Christian” or “Anti-Christ,” and we can resolve that any “Christian” who is teaching history through an anti-Christ prism should be marked out and avoided.
Postscript — All of this points in the direction of needing to train those going into the ministry in history and historiography. Because that hasn’t been happening I would counsel all parishioners to completely ignore your Pastor when he starts talking about history or historical events. He has zero training on the inter-relationship between history and what effects a Christian worldview has on understanding history. If you are going to listen to him I would encourage you especially to be like the Bereans when your Pastor talks about history and go check the primary sources yourself or go to Biblical Christians who have written on whatever history you’re seeking to be informed.
“Anybody who can praise, for example, a Winston Churchill, or a Martin Luther King, or a Abraham Lincoln at the very least has not learned a fundamental basic of Christianity which is to “hate that which is evil and to cling that which is good.””
This is a very fair and just point. Only, the one making this argument (I am speaking in abstract here, not making any accusations) then better not indulge in sentimental hero-worship towards Adolf Hitler, seeing him as misunderstood and maligned genius and martyr. This is where many revisionists fail – even while (justifiably) tilting at the PC idols they still hold onto an idol of their own.
It seems so obvious, in retrospect, that in 1939 Hitler should have allied himself with the Poles against the Soviets, and not vice versa. And in order to do so, he should have practised some Christian virtue of humble patience and even turning the other cheek, if necessary. (To make any kind of deal with Poland possible, he should have also refrained from marching into Prague, and thus breaking the word he had given at Munich.)
1.) Hitler’s programs for German euthanasia of the “unfit” and aged is by itself enough to understand that Hitler was no misguided genius and so should be reviled.
2.) From a nationalist perspective I can understand why Hitler rolled into Poland given Poland’s persecution of ethnic Germans who lived in Poland. Then there was the whole issue of Danzig. However, from a strategic consideration Hitler pushed the envelope too far by invading Poland along with the USSR (2 weeks later in a prearranged understanding). The Sudetenland was also majority populated by Germans.
All of this demonstrates how the Versailles treaty was the real reason for WW II.
But again, just to be clear …. I revile Hitler as much as FDR, Churchill, De Gaulle and especially Stalin.
I agree with Herbert Hoover who wrote that we should have stayed out of the conflict only seeking to pit the Marxist Communists against the Fascists Marxists.
“But again, just to be clear …. I revile Hitler as much as FDR, Churchill, De Gaulle and especially Stalin.”
I had hoped maybe you were coming around a little, along with Winston McCuen and myself.
The T4 program was not unlike many less transparent programs in the Allied nations, AND, most importantly, was discontinued under public outcry. This demonstrates that the Reich was much more responsive to the will of the people than the Western democracies. Ironic, huh? I don’t excuse it, but I think we should recognize differing degrees of accountability, morality, hardness and depravity per Romans 2:14.
Anybody who thinks I am “going to come around on Hitler” is going to die before I come around.
There were no heroes in the miasma that was WW II.
“I agree with Herbert Hoover who wrote that we should have stayed out of the conflict only seeking to pit the Marxist Communists against the Fascists Marxists.”
“Fascists Marxists?” Now there’s an oxymoron! Sounds like Herbert, Harry S. Truman, and yourself are committed to making (no, keeping) the world safe for the speculative capitalist plutocrats.
Heard it all before Ron on how the Fascists were not Marxist.
Of course that is Baloney.
I’m no more interested in speculative capitalist plutocrats (read Corporatists … read Bagels) than I am in Marxism of any stripe. Including the Fascists who were the NATIONAL SOCIALISTS (did you catch that word “socialists there?”)
And by the way … Hitler had no problem working cheek by jowl with your speculative Capitalist Plutocrats. See Antony Sutton’s book, “Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler.”
I am not interested in any poltio-economic system that is defined as “Everything inside the state, everything for the state, nothing outside the state.”
Christians see the state serving as just one sphere of life along with the church and family.
Hitler’s Germany desired the State to be all in all. The State was to be God walking on the earth.
Being a Christian … I’ll pass on that.
I’ve done my homework on this and you’ll not find me saluting Marxist Communism, Marxist Fascism, or Marxist Corporatism.
Not Stalin, not FDR, Not Mussolini, not Hitler, not Bill Gates or Zuck … but Christ.
“Christians see the state serving as just one sphere of life along with the church and family.”
The Reich had no problem with that statement. Read Richard Stiegmann-Gall’s “The Holy Reich”
“Hitler’s Germany desired the State to be all in all. The State was to be God walking on the earth.”
The Fuhrer says the exact opposite:
“The authority of the State can never be an end in itself. … If a government uses the instruments of power in its hands for the purpose of leading a people to ruin, then rebellion is not only the right, but also the duty, of every individual citizen. … Generally speaking, we must not forget that the highest aim of human existence is not the preservation of a State or government, but rather the preservation of the race.” p. 75.
Adolf Hitler, ‘Mein Kampf’, Murphy translation
(Anthony Sutton says some quotable things about Wall Street and Bolshevism, but he’s all wet in saying that Hitler was funded by the plutocrats).
I’ll grant that Hitler was not personally a Christian, but he promoted many Christian values and believed in honor, and loved his people. (ex. read what he said about gender roles). The same can’t be said for any of the other major players in WW2.
Hitler said a lot of things about the State.
By educating the young generation along the right lines, the People’s State will have to see to it that a generation of mankind is formed which will be adequate to this supreme combat that will decide the destinies of the world.
Adolf Hitler
The State here is revealed by Hitler as unto its Godlike ambitions since the family is the institution ordained by God to educate children.
And again;
The folkish state must not adjust its entire educational work primarily to the inoculation of mere knowledge, but to the breeding of absolutely healthy bodies. The training of mental abilities is only secondary. And here again, first place must be taken by the development of character, especially the promotion of will-power and determination, combined with the training of joy in responsibility, and only in last place comes scientific schooling.
Adolf Hitler
More grasping at absolute power for the state so that it may be God walking on the earth.
And again,
I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State’s authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.
Sorry Ron … I ain’t buying what you’re selling.
And isn’t it odd that Sutton could be so right on Wall Street and the Bolsheviks but so wrong on Wall Street and the National Socialists (Marxists).
The post war consensus. The open society where truth is discarded and replaced with the search for meaning leaving a culture of isolated individuals disconnected from everything doing whatever is right in their own eyes. What is imagined to be freedom ends invariably in slavery and tyranny.
Every single time.
How did that post-war consensus work out for the millions who died behind both the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain?
For Ron: when you defend Hitler, you defend sentiments like this:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Hitler's_Table_Talk_(1941-1944)_(published_1953)
6 August 1942.
“As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mould the best of them as we see fit, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pig-styes; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitants and civilising them, goes straight off into a concentration camp!”
And here Hitler sounds like a modern shitlib – contempt for historical Christian civilization is where anti-Christian Far Right and Far Left types can sound most similar:
1 August 1942.
“In the Spanish people there is a mixture of Gothic, Frankish and Moorish blood. One can speak of the Spaniard as one would speak of a brave anarchist. The Arabian epoch—the Arabs look down on the Turks as they do on dogs—was the most cultured, the most intellectual and in every way best and happiest epoch in Spanish history. It was followed by the period of the persecutions with its unceasing atrocities.”
At the end of the day, Hitler was by birth (his father was a typical 19th century anti-clerical patriarchal type who insisted that his WIFE would fulfill all the proper religious rites, but was not himself interested in religion) and education pretty much like those “Victorian” types that G.K. Chesterton described, who wanted to venerate the hearth without venerating the altar – that is, worshipping the fatherland (or race) while dropping the worship of God:
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301201h.html#ch1
“Above all, so far from being stiff with orthodox religion, it was almost the first irreligious home in all human history. Theirs was the first generation that ever asked its children to worship the hearth without the altar.”
Many so-called quotes attributed to Hitler come from spurious sources. Hermann Rauschning and adulterated editions of Table Talk come to mind. It’s the task of the honest historian to try to separate the facts from the deliberate distortions, using original and credible source materials. David Irving has done some very fine work in this vein, but even he ‘made a deal’ to pay some credence to the holocaust as a condition of early release from prison in Austria.
I’d again encourage you to listen to the Tom Hingest podcast on Tribal Theocrat:
Tom Hingest at Tribal Theocrat on National Socialism
https://tribaltheocrat.com/2012/12/tt-live-episode-11-first-word/
In conclusion, though not a regenerate man, Hitler had admirable qualities. He was honorable in his dealings with other heads of state (even many of his enemies said so) and always had the people in the forefront of his mind in decision making. Can you say the same of any other head of state in the Western Democracies then or now?