Texas Baptist Standard: Trump Comments Cross Into Nazi Territory
Those That Fail to Learn From History are Doomed to Repeat It
From philosophers and politicians as diverse as Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill, these words, or something similar to them, serve as reminders to us of the importance of understanding history, not just learning about events and being able to recite some dates. Santayana put himself on the front doorstep of the turbulent fascist development in Europe in the 1930's, leaving his post at Harvard and living in Italy under Mussolini's dictatorship. Churchill, of course, had to deal with the reality of fascism as it threatened the very existence of Great Britain. They lived in the history that was being made at the time.
And so are we, in America, now.
Explaining the danger sometimes seems like going back to a ninth grade history classroom, where I started my career, and laying out a course of objectives to students who have not much more than a perfunctory understanding of the past, something that they might have read in a textbook or heard from an elementary school teacher. They know the names, and some of them can cite the dates. But I fear that the lack of genuine understanding runs very deep in this country now, so deep that the rhetoric being spouted by a major party candidate, that is so familiar to those who do understand the turbulent European history between the two World Wars, is not ringing alarm bells in very many places.
The aftermath of the Second World War did not bring about the world peace that it should have, as a result of the horrors experienced by millions of people as a result of the war. It certainly changed Germany, for generations, as it did most of the rest of Europe. It transformed imperialist, militaristic Japan. Dare I say that it seems far less likely that a fascist figure, such as the one being created by Trump, would not be able to gain much of a following in either of those countries, even now, almost eighty years after the war ended?
Why is this happening in the freedom and democracy under the Constitution of the United States?
Because the horrors of World War 2 barely touched the territory of the United States. And because, in spite of that experience, the shallowness and lack of seriousness with which most of us approach the education of our children and youth has led to a categorical failure to provide a national understanding of history that would ring alarm bells and crush this development before it ever came out in the open.
Christianity Should Have Been Europe's Bulwark Against Fascism; Likewise it Should Also Be America's
Both Mussolini and Hitler exploited weaknesses in the established churches to neutralize what should have been the greatest opposition to their ideology. German Protestants embraced the nationalism embodied in the National Socialist agenda, an ideology not unlike that of American Christian Nationalism, the idea that God has placed a special blessing upon people of a particular ethnic and racial identity for the purpose of bringing justice to the world. Regardless of whatever means they chose to use to bring about this "will of God," including precipitating a bloody, destructive, inhumane war, they believed he would hold their coat-tails and cheer them on. The Protestant state church actually dedicated church buildings in the name of the Fuhrer.
The Catholic Church had billions of dollars in church property to protect inside Germany and Italy. The Vatican was, of course, just down the street from the headquarters of Italian fascism. In 1933, in a move aimed at its own self-preservation, abandoning the message of the Christian gospel, the Church negotiated the Reichskonkordat which required clergy who take office in the church to also take an oath of loyalty to the governor or president of the German Reich.
Loyalty to a political figure, in any possible way, is an abandonment of the church's mission and purpose, and its loyalty to Christ, which is the cornerstone of its very existence. There's a reason why that sounds so familiar among American conservative Evangelicals today. It's happening here, informally, but effectively.
There is nothing that Trump brings to the political table that Christians should be endorsing, or supporting with their votes. This political campaign has taken a clear and dangerous turn, not only away from foundational American values and democratic principles, but in a direction that is antithetical to every principle and practice of the Christian gospel. There's nothing there that bears any resemblance at all to the Christian gospel, not one thing, including the openly anti-Christian sentiments of the movements' leader, Trump.
To be sure, there are Christians, mostly those who are called "liberal" with derision in the intended use of the term by conservative, Evangelicals, who see this for what it is. Those Christians who have a deep knowledge and understanding of the historical and theological contexts of the Bible that Evangelicals claim is without error, and is infallible, are pointing to what has become one of the greatest departures from orthodoxy in Christian history, certainly in the United States, and showing what is a sharp contrast between true Christian faith and the anti-Christian practices and principles of Trumpism. This includes some Evangelicals and even some Fundamentalists, who also see the contradictions.
The recent rhetoric coming from Trump, resembling the Nazi party and Hitler, in the 1930's, There's no way to avoid making the comparison, even though we have some kind of accepted political correctness to avoid them. I don't understand why that hasn't created a bigger reaction than it has, especially among Christians, who should be the first to see this as the exact opposite of what they believe and who they are. But it seems that the more conservative they are, the more blind they are to what's being said and what's going on.
It's not possible to reconcile the gospel of Jesus Christ, and a personal salvation or conversion experience as a Christian with any of the rhetoric that has become the central theme of Trump's campaign. Frankly, by his own words, he rejects a Christian conversion experience in favor of one he has created himself, along with his own definition of the identity of God, totally inconsistent with the Christian gospel. That alone should have been enough to cause them to reject him, but the more conservative they are, the more blind they are to the inconsistency of what he says and does with theier biblical definition of the Christian gospel. Now, with this turn toward identifying with Hitler by using his rhetoric, he's become as anti-Christian as any politician or political philisophy we've seen ever represented by an American running for the presidency.
If those among American Evangelicals who continue to support him don't distance themselves from him and turn away from the direction he is leading them, it will not end well for their churches and denominations which are already seeing an increasing drain of membership, attendance and financial support. They run the risk of being identified biblically as apostate.
"But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first." Revelation 2:4, NRSV
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world. I John 4:1-3, NRSV
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