The content of a number of the posts on this thread have deeply bothered me. Sometimes when I come across certain kinds of statements I get angry and find myself with little more to say than to deride; but very often I'm upset by things and the only response I have is deep sadness and a frustration of not knowing if a response should be made at all or in what form it should.
In this case after some time to reflect two distinct thoughts I felt worth sharing. Both are quotes and references which I have gone back to frequently over the years because they never cease to seem relevant in these contexts.
The first is a quote attributed to Sinclair Lewis (though Lewis never actually said it/wrote it), "When Fascism comes to America it will come cloaked in the flag and waving a cross."
The second may take a bit of background.
There was a German Lutheran pastor by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer who lived during the Nazi regime; when the Nazis were gaining power Pastor Bonhoeffer spoke against them rather publicly through his radio program--until it was shut down. Bonhoeffer fled Germany, seeing the writing on the wall as it were, to the United States where he spent time at Union Theological Seminary in Harlem, NY. Bonhoeffer saw parallels between the treatment of African Americans in the US and what was starting to happen with Jews in Germany. Ultimately Bonhoeffer felt that it would be a betrayal of his faith to abandon his native Germany in its time of need--he returned to Germany and worked with many different underground pastors to create a network of underground churches. This was done because the official churches had been co-opted by the Nazis, organized as the
Reichskirche with the official dogma being Positive Christianity,
.
This was the flag of Positive Christianity as used by the
Deutsche Christen ("German Christians") and the
Reichskirche.
Bonhoeffer and other clergy in rejecting the Reichskirche and the Deutsche Christen movement formed the Confessing Church, and underground church which, with the help of well-known Swiss theologian Karl Barth put forward the Theological Declaration of Barmen; an articulation of faith in Jesus Christ which was a significant slap in the face of Hitler and the Nazis. The Declaration, for example, explicitly says the Christian Church knows no leaders (fuehrers) apart from Christ and the Office of the Ministry; there can therefore be no place for Hitler in the life of the Christian Church.
Bonhoeffer was a man who advocated peace, though his position on peace was not passivity, but an active non-violence. Which he writes extensively about, in part, in his most well known published work
The Cost of Discipleship.
Ultimately Bonhoeffer would agree to be complicit and take part in the secret plot to assassinate Hitler; for Bonhoeffer a dedicated pacifist considered such a move to be a necessary act in order to put an end to such wanton evil in the world, the plot famously failed and Bonhoeffer's involvement found out, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp and hanged just a few short months before the Allies liberated that very camp.
Bonhoeffer's legacy is in part largely thanks to the tireless work of his student and close friend Eberhard Bethge; Bethge believed Bonhoeffer should be known to the world at large, and is also responsible for collecting, editing, and publishing the works which Bonhoeffer managed to scrap together while in prison, including Ethics, which was never finished due to Bonhoeffer's tragic death.
With that background, here's the main thing: In the 1970s Eberhard Bethge and his family visited the United States, while there they were invited by the Rev. Jerry Falwell to visit his college, known today as Liberty University but I believe it was still Lynchburg Baptist College then. At a gathering of students all attendees, including the Bethges, received belt buckles with the image of the American bald eagle and the phrase "Jesus first!". Bethge was justifiably put off by this, how could he ignore the obvious parallel with what he had seen happen in his own Germany with the blending of nationalism and religion, and in particular something such as this:
For Bethge this seemed like a very obvious co-opting of the Christian faith, a co-opting of Jesus, by American right-wingers. This particular Jesus was an American Jesus.
Eberhard Bethge passed away in the year 2000 at the age of 90, a witness to the atrocities of the Nazis and the flagrant apostasy of the German churches, and a witness to the beginnings of America's move toward something dark; an American Reichskirche.
"When Fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
-CryptoLutheran
