Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1050: German Christian Nationalism and the American Church: Dr. Ryan Tafilowski

Episode Date: February 13, 2023

Dr. Ryan Tafilowski is an expert in the rise of the Nazi party in Germany 100 years ago and the German church’s response to the movement. It’s here where the concept of Christian nationalism became a divisive issue in the church. Ryan and I talk about the similarities and dissimilarities between German Christian Nationalism and modern American Chrisitan Nationalism. Ryan holds a PhD in systematic theology, a master’s in theology in history from the University of Edinburgh, and a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies from Colorado Christian University. Tafilowski has served as an adjunct professor in the Division of Christian Thought at Denver Seminary, adjunct professor of theology at Colorado Christian University, and postgraduate instructor in theology and ecclesiastical history at the University of Edinburgh. He serves as the lead pastor at Foothills Fellowship Church in Denver and as Theologian-in-Residence at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work.

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to offer a four credit option for Conversations in the Raw. I mean, that's crazy, right? For just 500 bucks, you can get three master's level credits from Denver Seminary or three undergrad credits from Eternity Bible College. You'll have to do extra work, obviously, but I mean, this is a screaming deal to get credit from an innovative learning experience. So go to theologyintheraw.com forward slash conversations to learn more about Conversations in the Raw. That's theologyintheraw.com forward slash conversations. Think deeply, love widely through Conversations in the Raw. Hey, friends. My guest today is Dr. Ryan Tafelowski.

He has a PhD in systematic theology and a master's degree in history from the University of Edinburgh and is a professor of theology and Christian thought at Denver Seminary. He also pastors a church in the Denver area. He's the author of a few different books. His dissertation, as you will learn, is titled Dark Depressing Riddle, Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of Volk in the theology of Paul Altos. Altos? Altos. Basically, he's an expert in Nazism and Nazi theology and the kind of German Christian response to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. So that's where we start out. And then we go to more current day conversations around Christian nationalism. So buckle up, buttercups. Here we go. Welcome to the show for the first

time, the one and only Dr. Ryan Tafelowski. Dr. Ryan Tafelowski. That just rolls off your tongue, doesn't it? Nailed it. Yeah. I'm always sympathetic with people with interesting last names um um thanks so much for coming on the show ryan and uh yeah i mean you've done a lot of work in many different areas um the one that's i mean your dissertation i'm not sure if this is

the title of your dissertation but dark depressing riddle germdle, Germans, Jews, and the Meaning of the Volk in the Theology of Paul Atheist. Is that right? Althaus, yeah. Althaus, Althaus. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of things that roll off the tongue, terrible, terrible title for a monograph, but that's true. That's the title. Now, you deal a lot with German Christian nationalism. That's been the air you've been breathing for a while. Can you unpack for us what that is? The term Christian nationalist has become such a widely talked about thing in our American context.

a century ago and hear about another nationalist movement and see if there are any parallels or how you can maybe shed some light on what we're talking about today. Yeah, for sure. I sort of colloquially say that I've got an interest in Nazi theologians, although that probably puts it a little too bluntly. I'm actually interested in conservative Lutheran theologians who found themselves mixed up with national socialism for a time. Because I actually think that's more interesting than sort of straight up villains, right? There are these figures that everyone's familiar with. You can think of someone like Martin Heidegger, who's just really excited about Nazism from the beginning, and then is sort of unrepentant about it after the war. who's just really excited about Nazism from the beginning and then is sort of unrepentant about it after the war.

I looked at figures and one guy in particular, Paul Althaus, who for reasons that I think if we're being charitable, we're understandable in his context. He got mixed up in a movement that he just did not appreciate the scale of. And, yeah, I'm actually working on a translation of his sermons right now from 1945, right at the end of the war, where he's sort of reflecting on this and saying, you know, we thought that Hitler was a gift and miracle of God. That's what he called Hitler in 1933. And then in 1945, he says, yeah, I was wrong about that. And, yeah, he was wrong about that. Can you take us back to kind of give us a kind of one-on-one? How was Paul Althaus?

Althaus? Yeah. Um, who was he and how did he get wrapped up in the national and what was maybe the nationalistic movement that he got wrapped up in and then what caused him to kind of rethink his position in 45? Yeah. Good question.

So he, um, is a Luther scholar. Primarily, that's how he's known, you know, most of his work has not been translated. He's not especially important in the 20th century, you know, which makes him ideal for a PhD dissertation, right? I started wanting to write on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And then I realized, oh, so did everybody else in the universe. And then I said, oh, maybe Barth would be interesting. And there's even more books on that. So I ended up with Althaus, who he's quite important as an interpreter of Luther. Some of his books that have been translated are The Ethics of Martin Luther and The Theology of Martin Luther. You'll still find

those on seminary syllabi and things like this. So he was a Luther scholar. He was a New Testament scholar. He taught New Testament and kind of historical theology at the University of Erlangen in Germany, which is sort of a conservative confessional Lutheran school, right? That was sort of its reputation in the 20th century. And he was there for most of his career. He's got an interesting biography. I mean, he was raised in a sort of idyllic rural town in Germany. He fought in the First World War in the Eastern Front in what is now Poland. He was a chaplain, military chaplain, saw the First World War there. And so he's got these sort of, yeah, he's got these sort of patriotic tendencies that are rooted in that period of his life where he was a soldier and witnessed what are unquestionably atrocities on both sides of the war.

He saw Germans being persecuted by the Russians. At least that was his interpretation. So he's got this nationalistic streak already as a young man. But, you know, and then he is ordained as a Lutheran minister. He ends up teaching in a few different places, and then he ends up in this sort of conservative bastion in Erlangen. And yeah, he's quite a moderate fellow. That's how he understood himself, conservative, certainly theologically, politically, socially, but certainly not some sort of rabid nationalist, right, that you get in the 1930s with the rise of nationalism where the church basically splinters into three factions. One that's really excited about Nazism, one that is resistant to the totalitarian claims of Nazism, and then a sort of unaffiliated middle that's sort of broadly conservative, willing to give Hitler a chance, but usually turn on him by the late 1930s.

And so another really important thing to mention is he's in the context of the Weimar Republic, which was Germany's really short-lived democracy that emerged after the First World War and lasted only about 12 years until the Nazis came to power. So he had a sort of nostalgic longing for the German Empire and the monarchy. So there's a lot of things rushing together. How would you describe, for somebody that's never even heard the word Nazi, because we just think Nazis, Holocaustocaust racist symbol of well all that's wrong with humanity what take us back to like when the nazi is it was it a political party

a movement both and and they'd have explicit christian ties or roots or was it kind of more religious or yeah just tell us about the rise of the nazi party i guess yeah good question so uh yes it does nazi is short uh it's an abbreviation for what translates as a national socialist workers party uh which is all one word in german like all words in german it's like a sentence long right so uh yeah it's a party a conservative coalition coalition that emerged as a resistance movement within the Weimar Republic, because after the dissolution of the monarchy, you had a parliamentary democracy take its place. That's the first time Germany had ever tried it. And it was a time of tremendous sort of unrest. There's lots of anxiety in the air. in the air. And so this conservative coalition gained some traction in that context. And that's typical, right? Authoritarian movements usually do gain traction in times of social upheaval, where there's lots of uncertainty. And that's because they offered a worldview that had lots

of ideological clarity, right? That's what was appealing about it, right? So German good, right? Now, that doesn't sound that controversial but you know when the First World War ended the Germans had to sign a treaty taking full responsibility for the war and all of its catastrophic aftermath so people were really depressed the Weimar Republic was a time where people felt like they needed to be ashamed of their Germaness they needed to embrace these sort of globalized pluralist ideals. A lot of Germans didn't want to. So when someone comes along and says, hey, no, actually, your German-ness is good.

You should celebrate it. That's attractive. So it was a very pro-German movement. Yeah, yeah. So Hitler comes along and in his rhetoric says, hey, the Versailles Treaty is just an absolute travesty. And people like Althaus, who fought in the war and saw it, agreed, said, yeah, this is an absolute scandal. We were parties to the war, but we can't take full responsibility, and we're the ones bearing all the consequences. Germany's economy is in a total tailspin.

So yeah, there's that factor. You also see fascism on the rise across Europe at the same time. You get fascism emerging in Italy, of course, and also in Spain. So this stuff is in the air. And then once he's in, he pulls these incredibly shrewd maneuvers where he basically passes legislation that installs him as, well, the Fuhrer, the leader. Okay, so Chancellor and Fuhrer. I used to be able to pronounce that. Those are different. One is kind of a democratically elected leader. The other one is more of a dictator. I mean, has a lot more just isolated power.

Would that be a way to distinguish the two? He was able to sort of maneuver Germany's political system to invest his person with a tremendous amount of power and discretion. And that's why when people say, oh, we're on the verge of becoming Nazi Germany here in America, I'm always suspicious of that sort of argument because our government is devised in such a way that makes that really difficult to do. Even if you had a president that was very narcissistic, had a lot of power issues, like even that there's so many checks that it wouldn't, it's not. Well, yeah, I mean, we saw our democratic institutions put to a stress test in the last few years, and they proved as of yet more durable than Weimar Germany's were, right? When the Nazis get in, they launch this entire program that's across the entire government. It usually gets translated as coordination or synchronization or something like this, where they sought to align all of the public institutions along their own ideological lines. So within several years, like the independent media

disintegrates, the independent judiciary disintegrates, you've got all the branches of the government sort of falling into line behind the Nazi government, including the church, which in Germany, right, for Americans, this is strange, but you've got a state church in Germany, which meaning all your pastors, all your theology professors are state employees, right? And so the church also was subjected to this pressure or coordination. And that didn't go, I think, as successfully as the Nazis had hoped. But in the United States, that would be really hard to do because the media is so fragmented. And you've got bicameral government in Congress. And then you've also got the judiciary

that's supposed to check executive power. It would just be hard to do. Not impossible. Yeah. You've used three words to describe the Nazi party that, from our American modern standpoint, seem to be at odds with each other but conservative socialist and fascist can you unpack what those mean in that context because some people would see socialism as the opposite of fascism although it does seem like most socialists from my very i mean totally i could be totally wrong but like turn either turn into fascism really easily or quickly or i don't know but conservative i don't picture like socialists and conservatives to go together yeah yeah so there's some some clarification that needs to be done here right so i'll put it this

way in the circles where i grew up the word liberal was used to describe any view with which you personally disagree. And it didn't matter what the content of the view was, right? You could call Marxism liberal, or you could call fascism liberal. Well, that's incoherent. That doesn't make any sense. They're on opposite sides of the political spectrum. This is true of theology also, right? Liberal has a very particular meaning in theology, right? It's an approach to theology that we typically associate with Schleiermacher and his descendants, right? And so even in Weimar Germany in early National Socialism, even theologians who were politically, sorry, theologically liberal were politically and socially conservative. So we have to distinguish between political and social

and theological when we use these words. So yeah, so that's one thing to say. Socialist in the sense that it coordinated all the organs of the government to a command economy, right? So we mean that in economics. and then fascism, I don't, to my knowledge, and I don't, I don't know, it could have happened. I'm just saying to my knowledge, the Nazis don't refer to themselves as fascists. That's a term that gets added later. But by that, we just mean an authoritarian response to a crisis of pluralism. So in, in, if you understand it in that way, all these things actually can fit together. They're trying to, I interpret Nazism anyway, or certainly, I should have put it this

way, I interpret Christian support for Nazism in the 30s as a response to pluralism. There's all this anxiety about civilization changing really rapidly, and they see these three things a command economy centralized power um and a return to sort of basic german values as really attractive i mean that does have parallels for today but we can hold off on that for a second but um so it did have this kind of in response to kind of a like woe is we're German, we screwed things up to wait a minute, but we're still German, like almost this like ethnocentric German exceptionalism. You know, they're like, hey, we're, you know, we have a great country. So I had a lot of that kind of patriotic fervor that was driving it. Would that be accurate? Okay.

Oh, yeah. I mean, oh, sorry. I'll just add here, Altaf has this really interesting feature to his theology, where he thinks that every ethnic group is supposed to be segregated from one another, right? So he's got this sort of segregationist logic, and he thinks that God has instilled every different ethnic group with a different quality that allows them to fulfill their destiny, which God has given them in world history. has given them in world history. And, you know, surprise, surprise. For example, he thinks that Africans, black people, their gift is physical strength, which means they're meant for manual labor. So he doesn't come out and endorse slavery, but it's not that hard to understand how he would. And he thinks, surprise, surprise, Germans are endowed with a vast genius that no other country has, and they're meant to lead civilization into its ultimate destiny wow so there were i was gonna ask like when the nazi party came to power did it have these kind of blatant racist themes that's what always shocks me like how do you get so much support in assuming that there's a good you know it's 100 years ago a lot of people

were a lot more maybe blatantly racist back then but But did it succeed on that kind of banner? Was that more in the background? Was it more subtle when they came to power? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, one of the things that's so shocking about National Socialism is that it didn't really disguise its ideology. that it didn't really disguise its ideology. And there's been lots of scholarly work on this in recent years. One guy named Jeffrey Herf has written a book called The Jewish Enemy, in which he makes a painstaking case and he shows pretty clearly that the Nazis told you exactly what they planned to do, and then they did it. And he even shows, for example, like placards at bus stops saying things like the Jews are our misfortune. Right. It just says it like, you know, it's like waiting to get on the train or something. And you look over and there's an advertisement for like how Jews are the end of German society. Right. And if you've read Mein Kampf, I mean, Hitler is pretty clear in there, too, that he's he's got a worldview of Aryan supremacy undergirded by this notion

that history is driven by violent conflict. Althaus thinks that too. A lot of these thinkers do. So how did that gain such widespread public support? Were people just very anti-Semitic or were they kind of like, what's the other answer? I don't know. Well, there's a couple of things going on. I mean, another guy named Christopher Browning has written a book called Ordinary Men, which which sold a lot of copies. It was a sort of semi scholarly book in which he showed that actually most Germans didn't have to be coerced into complicity with the Holocaust. Most Germans were happy to help. And he shows that, you know, you've got these special mobile units in the German army, Einstattgruppen, who collect Jews and exterminate them. And people were signing up for these assignments. And we even have sort of local townspeople turning in Jews in their neighborhood,

people who they suspect might be Jews or hiding their Jewish identity. So you do have this really under, you've got this strong underlying current of antisemitism, which is a feature, not, I mean, not really exclusively to Germany, but all of Western Europe. And then I think one of the things we're seeing in our political moment, and this is where there's possibly one parallel, is that there is a tremendous appetite for politicians who say the quiet part out loud right who who basically make our grievances seem legitimate and when they speak first we feel empowered to speak uh in ways that are harmful or destructive yeah i think you've got a racist society in 1930s Germany that has a tremendous amount of resentment built up and then finally has an outlet to express it. And was Hitler just, I mean, such a compelling leader speaker?

I mean, the cultural moment is set for a charismatic leader to come on the scene. I know literally nothing about Hitler other than he's almost like this nebulous symbol of evil. I don't know. I mean, I've seen, like everybody else, the videos of him giving these strident speeches. And he's got these really unusual mannerisms, which are authoritative. And he's got the strange cadence of speaking, which is sort of mesmerizing, right? People describe this, that he's sort of enchanting. And then he's also got this German mythology, which there's a huge appetite for,

right? And of course, it makes sense if someone who's charismatic and strong and shrewd and and brilliant comes along and tells you that actually your society is the most important society on earth um and that it's your destiny to lead civilization to its culmination and climax i mean that that's attractive yeah he's he's shrewd. Although if you read Mein Kampf in retrospect, it reads a little bit like a screed that the Unabomber might write or something like this. It's not terribly coherent. It's just like an assembled grievances. But I think as we're also seeing in our political moment, and not just in the US, you're seeing this all across the democratic world. Grievance is a tremendously attractive and powerful and delicious affection to indulge, right? And so especially when you feel like civilization is going to crap or going to hell like many Germans did, grievance can be really satisfying and powerful.

grievance can be really satisfying and powerful. Grievance, like I feel hurt by how people are treating us or thinking of us and that kind of defense mechanism of like, no, I'm not as bad as people think I am. Totally. Yeah. Right. So for the, in the German context, it's got a few edges. It's got the whole Versailles treaty, aftermath of the war thing. But also, you know, all of these theologians they think that germany

is a christian nation and they mean this almost in like an ontological sense right like that to be german is to be christian like it can't be another way and so that's why they're so like that's why altas has so much anxiety about jews is he sees them as agents of secularization and corruption, right? And that they are, they're all Marxists and they're all atheists and they're going to corrupt our youth. And so he's really worried about that. He's really worried about, for example, Berlin has a really kind of booming gay scene at the end of the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s. There's all kinds of hand-wringing about this. There's lots of worries about immigration.

There's a passage where Althaus is really alarmed that he goes out into his university town and he hears people speaking in languages that aren't German. So it feels like German-ness is under siege. So that's where the conservatism piece comes in. They want to conserve old you know our german values and go back to when we were yeah just i don't know has that yeah it's making sense now like that that's when you talk about german nationalism and conservatism like that's where those categories really do feed into each other um the socialist piece is an economic view that

again in our current culture today is associated more with not conservative. But it doesn't have to be that way. There's nothing intrinsic about socialism that has to be conservative or not conservative. Interesting. Yeah, it was – there was also kind of a thought. I mean here again it goes to this. Like they all have this view of a national type. I mean, here again, it goes to this, like they all have this view of a national type and the German national type they just see as incompatible with kind of modern values.

So they're suspicious of capitalism. They're suspicious of a democratic government. You know, Germany, since the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century, had basically been a monarchy. And that's all people had ever known sort of centralized power oh okay okay to your knowledge like how did a chunk of the german church go along with this like was the church too just as racist or were they just duped or yeah what like i guess well you're a guy that you're studying like for a long time he was very excited about this movement as a christian yeah yeah so this is a really complex question and there's a bunch of strands going on here uh one thing to say and there's lots of scholarly debate about whether nazism understood itself as a christian movement okay um

the consensus has been basically not although there has been a really important book called the holy reich it's by a guy named Richard Steigman Gall. And he argues quite persuasively that many high-ranking Nazis were Christians or not. But at the very least, Nazism saw Christian rhetoric as their ticket to power. So particularly the early Hitler in the early 30s does make these sort of signals interested in Christianity. He wants to put it back to its rightful place as Germany's worldview, and he wants to recover Christian values. And so early Hitler, I think it's not too hard to see why some Christians were saying like, okay, yeah,

this is how Althaus thought about it. Yeah, he's rough around the edges. I don't really like the brutality that seems to be intrinsic in the Nazi platform. But if he's going to put Christianity back at the center of German life, then I think we can sort of make our peace with it. That's what he thought until about 1937 or so. There were other Christians who I could only describe it as an unrequited love affair with Nazism, right, who are really excited about the Nazi platform. There's I mean, you may be familiar with the University of Jena in Germany. It produced a bunch of like quite important New Testament scholars. They focus think tank to write up basically a manifesto to theologically support the nazi party platform um so some people go all in that's sort of a lunatic fringe but i think most sort of

centrist germans just sort of saw nazism as as a chance to reverse the tide of secularism and uh store germany to its christian heritage so so so you're saying some of the more moderate christians or whatever just didn't love everything about the rise of nazism but as a means of restoring germany to its christian heritage i mean the last five minutes of you talking are you trying to map all that on some stuff going on today or is it just that i mean there are some obvious differences but are there are there some just uncanny interesting commonalities that you see when you look around at kind of certain movements today and i know there's a big discussion about christian nationalism i mean again i don't i don't nothing from the past can perfectly map onto the future

but there's seems like there's some interesting parallels there can you go there for us for a little bit uh i can with great fear and trembling uh i will be uh i'll try to be quite deliberate and careful and i'll try to be charitable here too just how about this be turn into an atheist historian that's just looking at history with no dog in the fight i guess i don't okay all right i can try that uh okay i do think it's important to stay and we've already covered this that there are i think probably more dissimilarities than similarities right so i mean america is the is the oldest contiguous democracy in the world um it's not the most ancient democracy, but it's the longest standing democracy, a couple hundred years.

Our institutions so far have proved to be quite durable. We don't have a state church, right? So I'm a pastor, but it's written into our constitution that the government doesn't pay my wages. And this was true of theology professors also. Right. So they, they, there is an economic pressure for them to not to, uh, not to make a fuss. And in fact, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, um, lost part of his salary as a result of this, uh, and then gave another share of it to a, to a Jewish colleague who had lost his salary completely. So there's that factor too. I also want to point out, before I point out some similarities, we have got to stop

it with the Holocaust comparisons. We've just got a, you know, like a vaccine mandate is not remotely close to the Holocaust, right? A mask mandate is not remotely close to the Holocaust. The government asking you to suspend some element of some of your minor civil liberties during a pandemic is not a Holocaust, right? In fact, I would argue theologically the Holocaust has no analog, right? It's truly absurd in the sense that it defies all logics. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for those sorts of arguments. all logics. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for those sorts of arguments. So similarities. I think there are a couple of important ones. I think, number one,

you've got a similar sort of supersessionist hermeneutic going on, where a lot of these theologians thought that Germany was basically the new Israel, or they had been tasked with kind of carrying on the work of God's kingdom in the world. And this is why they're really anxious that Christianity appears to be in decline in the early 20th century. And there are some expressions of American evangelicalism that has a similar hermeneutic that America is somehow chosen in a way that is analogous to Israel. And that explains some forms of American Zionism and also this American exceptionalism. And I think, I mean, to be perfectly candid, I think it rests on a really faulty hermeneutic. I don't think there's any grounds at all to conclude that America is

elect in the way that Israel is. And real problems ensue when you think that. Yeah, yeah. Or even like just the – when you were saying that like Nazism wasn't a – and first of all, I appreciate you leading with the very important differences. And I think it's just sloppy and it's just – it's just – yeah, it's just sloppy when people kind of try to map. Typically, right, it's Republicans on the Nazi Germany. But you see it from the right saying that the left is they're a bunch of Nazi fascists telling everybody what to believe and what to do. And again, there's pieces.

I'm like, yeah, I could connect some dots. But it just seems intellectually sloppy to try to map it onto perfectly. So I appreciate that. onto perfectly. So I appreciate that. But the Nazi party not actually really being a Christian movement, but using a Christian base or Christian rhetoric, Christian language when it helps their cause and power. I mean, I see a lot of that. Again, this is, I would say bipartisan, but it would be, I think, primarily from the right that sees this evangelical base as a means of power and will do things and say things that will satisfy the base. I mean, do you see that? Just as you're talking, that's kind of where my mind went. I'm like, that seems like a really strong similarity, like Christians in the

country being used really for the sake of the power of a certain political party. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I think there are certainly parallels here. And I think you did well to note that it is bipartisan, right? I think you're more likely to see it on the right, but you can also see it on the left, where sort of unsophisticated appeals to the ethic of Jesus are sometimes made by politicians on the left that, well, if you're a Christian, then you must support every kind of immigration no matter what. Well, that actually doesn't follow. That's not a coherent argument. It's a rhetorical argument that's not meant to be investigated very far, right? And so as you were posing the question,

I was thinking of someone like Paul Tillich, who emigrated from Germany in the Nazi years, in part because he couldn't swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler, which was required of all state employees by the mid-1930s. And so he ends up in America. And he – I can't remember which of his writings it is, but someone out there will know, I'm sure. it is. Um, but, uh, someone out there will know, I'm sure. Uh, but he says basically whenever you, and I'm paraphrasing him, whenever you hear a politician say, God, you need to ask which God, like you need to actually interrogate that. Right. We don't all mean the same thing when we say that. So yeah, you, you do have, I think early Nazism, especially sort of saying oh yeah like we are we're the party for christians okay yeah um and and if you care about the future of christianity in germany then you're going to be

nazi you're not for these uh weimar republicans who are um pluralist in their worldview and they want to introduce all kinds of elements that are foreign to the german spirit why would you vote for them so i think absolutely there's a parallel a parallel. Real quick, so the idea that the other political side is going to hinder your Christianity is going to, you know, they're not on your side, we're on your side. Whether a certain political party says we are Christian, I don't think most people would say that. But I would say that this political party is going to benefit you Christians more. And that and also the intertwining of national values with the promotion... What do I want to say? How do to say it like yeah just it's just a conflation

of national values and religious values they they making i almost said making germany great again i'm trying to avoid saying that but like like because i don't i i think there's so much bipartisan analogies here that i don't want to make it a partisan thing but um but yeah this return to historic german values is a thing that Christians should desire. It sounds like when you're talking, that was kind of the appeal that this main mantra of the Nazi Party was striking a chord with even Christians because of their Christian values. Yes, returning to traditional Germanism, traditional this, that. That's a good Christian thing for us to want even if we've got this kind of you know i don't know dictator at the top says things we don't all agree with but

his ultimate goal is similar to what we want for society too would you see that as a parallel oh yeah i mean i think i think without question uh there's there's a political scientist named uh andrew manis and he's talking about the american, but it works very well in the German context, too. So there's some crossover here. He says there's two different visions of American civil religion. One is exclusivist homogenous is the language he uses. Right. So American civil religion means that basically, basically we speak English. We're white. We're Christian. We may not go to church, really, but but we want there. Uh, we, we may not go to church really, but, but we want there to be churches and we want people to go there. Right. You, you might call it,

and I, I mean, no offense, but you might call it country music, Christian, right. Uh, sort of, um, yeah, patriotic, socially conservative, um, and, um, and Christian, but perhaps not in any sort of robust way. And then Maness says there's another competing vision of civil religion, which he calls pluralist civil religion, which he sees basically as animating, say, American Protestant liberalism, which sort of holds that America is a better place when we have immigrants and when there's lots of different languages being spoken and when there are other worldviews introduced. And I think you can see a really similar dynamic going on in Weimar Germany, right? Althaus is really worried about immigration. He's really worried about

changing norms and sexual ethics. And he's really worried that people speak German. That seems to be very important to him, right? Or that they assimilate when they immigrate, right? And so he's got this exclusivist, homogenous civil religion. And so, yeah, you get a lot of these figures who they are willing to say, sort of hold their nose and endorse Hitler, right? Which is rhetoric you hear a lot in our context, right? Hey friends, Preston here. As most of you know, I'm an author with David C. Cook Publishing,

but I'm also an avid reader. And so I wanted to share with you some of my favorite authors and books. These are authors that have inspired me, challenged me, helped me grow in my faith in new and exciting ways, and I know they'll do the same for you. If you want to find out more, go to davidccook.org forward slash theology in the raw. That's davidccook.org forward slash theology in the raw. I can't wait to hear what you think. Hello, friends. Registration is now

open for Exiles and Babylon Conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the

problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have Ellie Bonilla and Street Hams back by popular demand. And Tanika Wya and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry, featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side, and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023, here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register

sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theologyintherod.com. I think people that, for instance, support Trump, I think there's many different reasons for them voting for Trump. All the way to like Trump is basically sharing the throne with Jesus. All the way to, you know, I hate both candidates, but I'm 51%. You know, like, or especially in the 2016 election, as Bill Burr said, you know, we had the choice between this blatant racist and the devil. You know, like, when I talk to Christians that I know in my anecdotal experience, a lot more Christians that did vote for Trump that were not, would not at all be considered like Trumpist. No, yeah.

And wide diversity of reasons for them. Yes. Whatever. Anyway, all that to say, I think some of the anti-Trumpism is just almost kind of uninteresting to me because it's just, it's, I don't know, it's kind of like playing the same game

and just failing to understand the complexity of our social and political moment. But, well, I just, um, I'm glad you said that. I think,

um, one of the interesting parallels to is, is the, the anger that is in the air. Um, yeah, that, that seems to be,

to be really similar. A historian, great historian of the 20th century, Fritz Stern, has written a book called The Politics of Social Despair about Germany in the 1920s and 30s. Nazism was, I think, the rotten fruit of the politics of cultural despair. And while the parallels are not identical, we are living in a moment, I think it's really obvious, where the politics of cultural despair are dominating our discourse.

And this is true on the right and on the left, right? Just think about how much anger there is. It looks different on the right and on the left. On the right, it looks like resentment, right? And so grievance, rage, right? On the left, it tends to look like self-righteousness or contempt or disdain. But like, listen, as a Christian ethicist, I mean, I feel like I just sort of have to say resentment and disdain are not fruits of the spirit, right? Like we got, we got to be resisting the politics of cultural despair, whether we're Republicans or Democrats or unaffiliated or somewhere in between. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. I think what was so true, I think what I was trying to get at was like this idea that here's this imperfect candidate.

I don't like maybe a lot of what he stands for or whatever, but like to get us back to kind of more old school America where we had more Christian values. When in the public schools, they weren't indoctrinating our kids with certain ideologies that you know i just totally disagree with we weren't being told we're you know immoral for holding to be for being a christian it's like we have pluralist society we can agree to disagree but now christians and some circles are made to feel like now i'm like if i believe in traditional marriage publicly i'm like people see me as like fundamentally immoral we're back in the old school days you know oh you're a christian obviously in the old school days, you know, Oh, you're a Christian. Obviously you believe that. And if you, you know, whatever. Um, so I think, yeah. And then they say, well, of these horrible candidates,

here's a guy that's just like saying the quiet part out loud. He's going to bowl in a china shop. Well maybe he can kind of like be the one to ramp through certain things that are going to bring us back to a better society where, um, Christianity was maybe more tolerant. Or people tolerated Christians, didn't think that they were like of the devil. And all of that, like when you start heating the rhetoric

on both sides and start demonizing the other, you know, on the one side, you have a bunch of baby killers on this side and then you have a basket of deplorables on the other. It's like people don't think clearly when their humanity is just being attacked over and over. They just hunker down and say, all right, you want to fight? Fine, let's fight. And I don't even know where this – I think it just happened kind of back and forth for a while,

which as a very apolitical or all-Potters in person, to me is just historically interesting. What saddens me is when so much of Christian discipleship has been very much swept up into these polarized, dehumanizing debates. Yeah. Well, you say a couple things I think that are really important. Number one, one of the things that was really challenging for me about studying Althaus is that I could identify with him in a lot of ways. I'm conservative by temperament. That's not to say anything about ideology or theology, but I'm conservative by temperament. Basically, my entire goal in my adult existence is for no one to ever look at me ever again, which is why I only wear gray sweaters and I drive a beige Honda Civic.

I'm that kind of person. And I think what you said is really good there. Part of what attracts people to conservative political ideologies, and I don't see this as a problem, I see it as perfectly understandable, is that nobody likes to sort of be bigoted for holding views that that are deeply associated with their religious traditions um you know that and and when when hillary referred to these folks as baskets of deplorables that was just a catastrophic misstep because it it feeds the the politics of cultural despair and and it's dehumanizing to them. And I'll just say, you know, it isn't helping the situation to make the other side feel small and stupid, right? So that's

important. Number two, another reason it was challenging for me is because Althaus tried to exonerate himself or, yeah, justify his views by saying, yeah, in my personal life, I find Hitler abhorrent. Um, but politically I have to support him. And, and you know, what's so interesting about this word for word with so many Christians would say totally right. And I, I mean, it's easy for me to justify my views that way. Uh, it's easy for anyone. And, and so what's really interesting is, you know, after the Nazis lost the war, and this is in 1945 into 1946, the Allies came into all these towns and they set up these tribunals where all the state employees had to go through these so-called denazification

trials. They had to demonstrate that they weren't sympathetic to Nazi ideology. Althaus failed his in 1945 and lost his position, but then he was reinstated. And part of him being reinstated is he collected all of these letters from students and colleagues in Erlangen who all said privately he hated Hitler. He told us all the time, but he never went on the public record. So that's very,

that's, that's challenging for someone like me or anyone who's trying to, I think, faithfully follow the way of Jesus in the public square is like, does it cut mustard to have private views that you never expressed publicly? Probably not. Right. Um, and the last point you made that I think, um, concerns me most, this is the parallel I find most distressing is that when you see this turn towards a culture war posture, it signals to me that evangelicals and I'm an the gospel's vibrancy, that we don't think that we can persuade our culture to adopt the true good and beautiful in any other way except by legislating it. This is what Jürgen Moltmann in his book The Crucified, calls pusillanimous faith, fearful faith. It's fragile. It's afraid that it can't withstand the pressures of pluralism. So it tries to short circuit them, right? Eliminate them. Whereas I think a gospel response would be, okay, we realize we have to compete with other worldviews now. Let me show you why the story of Jesus Christ is true, good, and beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing a lot of reading like in Harawas and that whole stream of just, I think the typical political position or posture of Christians reflects a very anemic ecclesiology. It seems that when Jesus broke into into the you know so it was

announcing the kingdom of god is at hand i do i love the concept of these colonies you know the church is like our colonies of heaven on earth and we are forming our own alternative polis city you know that it should be reflecting the the kingdom values that are in a sense competing with rome but showing rome a better way to live out our citizenship on, on earth. And when we invest so much energy or hope in political change, I think it just reflects a very anemic ecclesiology and, and gospel really.

Yeah. And that, that's really well said. And I like the idea of the colony. Not, and not, and so not as a, and that's really well said. And I like the idea of the colony. And here's where the Hauerwasian people get critiqued. It's like, well, okay, that's just a separatist movement. You're just like, no, no, no, no. It's the best way we can actually influence and help society is by being the church.

Like being the church, embodying the gospel ethic is not as a way to hunker down and build walls, but we're not going to be effective in reaching the world if we're not being the church first. So it's not an either or. I think that's where he gets accused of being kind of like more of a separatist. Well, you know, you're the Paul scholar, not me, so I won't say too much here, but I like the image that Paul uses of an ambassador. It's a very suggestive image, right? It is someone who is from somewhere else, but lives in the, you know, the foreign territory and actually participates in the public discourse there. That's literally the whole point of an ambassador. Right. So that can overcome some of that separatism. And he, and Paul,

I mean, this is something I'm knee deep in right now. Just the sheer volume of overlap between the language that Paul and Jesus uses to describe the Christian movement is just the sheer overlap between that language and the language used to describe the Roman empire and their emperor. And like, it's just like they're co-opting all this language, which just that alone suggests that, yeah, that the Christian movement is intended to embody the kind of kingdom on earth that other kingdoms are trying to pursue.

That the gospel is not creating apolitical. I even said that wrongly earlier. They're not creating all political societies. They're creating the extremely political, um, King, you know, um, colonies on,

on earth that are doing it better than, than the kingdoms of the, of the earth. Before I do want to, sorry, take a little bit of a turn. Can you help us understand the current conversation around Christian nationalism?

I guess a lot of what we've been talking about already is kind of laying some foundational, uh, some foundations for that, but what is, can you define Christian nationalism? I know there's like 10 different definitions and yeah, I just have lots of questions about it. Have you, I mean, read like, have you been paying attention in modern day discussions around Christian nationalism? Is it a lot, kind of is a lot like what you read about in 30s and 40s in Germany? Or is there a lot of differences? Or? Yeah, yeah, a little bit, a little bit. I'll confess here that I mostly read people who are dead in German. And so I read, I read some contemporary literature, I'm aware of the discourse. And you know, of course, I'm a pastor, you know, with lots of people in my congregation who are deeply concerned about

political questions. And I've also got a multi-generational congregation. So I got younger folks who have certain views and older folks who have others, and it's hard to negotiate that. So I'm sort of in the thick of it. I also teach at an evangelical seminary that is trying to negotiate these questions too, in real time. What does it mean to be a faithful follower of Jesus in a cultural moment like ours? How would I describe Christian nationalism? Well, I mean, I guess I would describe it, at least from my study of the German context, I would want to think of it mainly in terms of a certain kind of response to anxiety over pluralism. That's really how I would want to think about it. And pluralism of all kinds, right?

Religious pluralism, you know, of course, right? Societies that were once more homogenous are getting less so. And that means people are coming and they believe different things about the world. That produces certain challenges that triggers, I think, quite an anxious response. I think this is true racially. Our country is in the midst, I think, of a convulsion about how to think about various ethnic identities trying to share one space without a common vision of the common good, right? Which is basically what liberal democracies are trying to do, which is get people who don't share many values to coexist

together. And they try to solve it through freedom, basically personal freedoms. So you've got ethnic, racial, uh, pluralism, religious pluralism. And I really think, um, a lot of it is driven by changing norms around sexuality and gender as well. There's now, we might call it sort of gender sexual pluralism. And there's probably others that we could identify. But I think what you're seeing, nationalism of all stripes, not just Christian nationalism, just purely political nationalism, is a search for certainty in the midst of uncertainty. just Christian nationalism, just purely political nationalism is a search for certainty in the midst of uncertainty. And so what you're getting, I think, is folks trying to find some solid ground when the

ground seems to be moving. And so I would want to understand nationalism of every stripe, Christian nationalism included, as an anxious response to pluralism. nationalism included as an anxious response to pluralism. Would a significant part of Christian nationalism be, you know, returning to traditional American values, whatever that means? Hopefully that's the post 1968 world they're trying to return to. But would they see that as kind of coinciding with the Christian mission?

Like that would be good for the kingdom of God. If America returns to its traditional Christian kind of values and roots, like these two missions, America returning, the church being the church, like they would see this as kind of very much intertwined. Would that be accurate? I'm just kind of thinking out loud. But yeah, I mean, I think there is something deeply embedded in the american psyche to that effect dating the massachusetts bay colony and the puritans who understand their commonwealth as a sort of expression of a godly commonwealth not quite a theocracy but a civil society that is organized according to godly principles um that's not the only source of the american political identity but it is a significant one right so i mean if i mean christian values are good are from the creator are good for

creation so i mean i could say that i don't yeah even bring that up as like necessarily a bad thing i think the means by which we try to go about that that i think that's where some of the rub meets but to say i want the creator's design to be more widespread throughout creation yeah i think that's yeah i think that's a good idea maybe really help really helpful distinction you make there um and you know another key difference between the puritans and I don't know, a Christian nationalist in our context perhaps is that, uh, the Puritans are really serious about Christian discipleship. Now you might think it's wrongly oriented, but you know, I've seen research and I'm not

a specialist, so take it with a grain of salt, but I've seen research that shows, uh, that lots of people who are, who fit the bill of a Christian nationalist don't go to church. Even the majority of them don't. Don't read the Bible. Don't pray. It's almost like the idea of Christianity is more important than the practice of it. I took a survey on Twitter a couple days ago. I don't know if you're on Twitter or not.

I said, what percentage of American evangelicals do you think are Christian nationalists? More than 50%, 25 to 50, 10 to 25, and less than 10. It was interesting. It was pretty much evenly. Oh, really? Pretty much evenly. Almost every one of those four percentages got 20 to 20-ish percent vote. Now, here's the two problems why I know i was under word limit so what do

you mean by evangelical what do you mean by nationalist because according to some surveys seven percent of america are evangelicals according to others 70 you know like right but like yeah like that that broad percentage might have people that haven't been to church in like 10 years you know or they don't you have some basic christian doctrine they wouldn't even know anything about it but they still identify you on a form. Oh yeah. Evangelical, you know? Yeah. That's right. Yeah. So, um, and then nationalists, what do you, like I had one guy say, well, I like America. I, I'm, I have a flag out front. Um,

I'm a Christian. I typically vote Republican. Am I, am I a Christian nationalist? You know, like, so I think good questions. Yeah. Yeah. Just define, I think, questions yeah yeah just define i think um trying to define christian nationalism nationalism is tough but what would you i i guess with those caveats do you think however you define christian nationalism do you think it's like why very widespread in evangelical church or less than people make it out to be or um or do you want to plead the fifth? It's a delicate question to be sure.

I think one of the problems with the term, which I think it's a perfectly useful term, but one of the problems with it is the animus with which it's employed. It's used so pejoratively and so derisively. And I serve a congregation where there's lots of people like that man you just described. Like, you know, I have lots of veterans in my congregation. They got drafted, most of them, to fight in a war that, you know, they didn't pick.

You know, they got sent there. It's a really difficult experience. They came home. They found it hard when they got home, they found, they felt sort of rejected. Um, speaking of Vietnam vets, particularly, but, um, and you know, and so they're, they have military service, uh, you know, they, they might've worked for the government or something or law and law enforcement. They have a flag, they have a flag in their yard, but you know, on the ground, none of those people is trying to harm anyone.

What percentage of them were supportive of January 6th? Because I see that conflated. If you're Christian nationally fine, then you're basically... It's only a matter of time until I have another January 6th. I've met a lot of patriotic Christians, even lowercase p

patriotic like you described. I've never personally met a person who was supportive of January 6th. Yeah. My intuition would be, and it's nothing more than an intuition. My intuition would be that that's a lot less common than, than you might think watching, I don't know, CNN or something. Yeah. I think it's also, I think it's also quite different across age demographics right so i

i suspect um among self-identified evangelicals like maybe even under 40 uh christian nationalism is probably pretty rare okay yeah okay interesting have you read that book uh who's that guy wolf on is it defending christian nationalism are you familiar with this i haven't i read a review of you familiar with this? I haven't. I read a review of it. It sounds interesting, but I haven't read it. Okay. Yeah, I don't think.

I don't know. It's not my area, really. But it's interesting. We said mostly it's used pejoratively, but he's apparently not at all using it pejoratively. Well, yeah. I haven't read the book, but there's a long history of American, sorry, of Christian political theology. I mean, going all the way back to someone like Aquinas, who basically says it would be good if civil societies organized themselves around biblical principles, not to indoctrinate them, but because biblical principles allow for human flourishing. Right. So there is this.

Which I would agree. Yeah. I mean. Is it okay to agree with that? Sure, yeah. I mean, I think that's generally right. Now, critics of the Thomist strand have typically said, well, that doesn't account for sin adequately, right? And governments also have to restrain sin and coerce people. There's a sort of Augustinian realist tradition that raises that critique. But, you know, I generally think Aquinas is right about that. I mean, when people organize their life individually or their common life in ways that are consistent with how God designed life to function, then flourishing results. I think that's true. But most people will look at at least the majority of Christian ethical norms that are already accepted in broader Western society.

I mean, adultery is not good and murder is not good. And, you know, even Sabbath keeping, like, don't like working just round the clock, just working yourself to death and not stopping and taking. I mean, there's secular people that would agree with Sabbath as again, as a create, as this is good for human. So, I mean,

I feel like a good number of Christian values. I mean, this is, this is that book. Oh, Tom Holland, not the actor, but yeah,

I think that's his point, right? That, that so much of our society has been just our values have been adopted from the church. So, um, and he's not even, I think he's an eighth or not religious. He is. Yeah. He's a, he's a non-religious classicist. And, um, one of the things that's so compelling about that book is he, uh, he basically says, um, Oh, do you like things like human rights and women being characterized as people and things like laws against sexual abuse of children? He says, you know who you have to thank for that, right?

That's the Christian sexual ethic. That's wild. There's a recent book I read by Louise Perry about the sexual the end of the sexual revolution or rethinking she's a secular feminist journalist in the uk but basically said that like the sexual revolution i mean has been incredibly harmful towards towards women it's fed the appetites of men even something like the invention of the pill which has been hailed like this is freedom for religion now now women can have all the sex they want apart from relationship relational ties and she says yeah who wants that men way to go and um anyway she um she again not religious at all but like the underlying ethic

that she is kind of seems to value comes really close to a christian sexual ethic without ever even mentioning it without even really knowing it but she's just looking in the sense that like let's just look at what happens when you pursue when you just take away virtually all boundaries on sexual um activity or even she has a great her best chapter is on consent, how consent is kind of a fraud that you cannot hold together a healthy sexual ethics simply by consent. There's just so many issues of what that even means and power dynamics within that. And it's fascinating, man. It's, uh, but yeah, anyway, I, yeah, I've seen arguments to that effect. Um, and, uh, right now I'm teaching a class on theological anthropology this semester and, uh, thinking quite a lot about sexual ethics.

And there has been a lot of dissatisfaction, even in the last two years, about thinking of consent as the only criterion to govern a sexual ethic. I mean, it's harmful for both parties, degrading. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. This is so much fun, man. And, yeah, I'm sure we provoked some thoughts, maybe made –, it's not a theology episode of something that doesn't leave angry. So, um, yeah, I look forward to that one-star review that will result from this, but, uh, Oh, real quick, real quick. So you teach at Denver seminary. You want to give a shout out to Denver seminary and, uh, convince somebody why they should choose that seminary over others.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. So yeah, I teach at Denver seminary. We are a, uh, interdenominational evangelical school. But one of the things I love best about the culture of Denver Seminary is related to lots of the questions we've just talked about, which is it's written right there into our statement of faith, the separation of church and state, which also implies that the gospel is not to be conditioned by any sort of political ideology. that the gospel is not to be conditioned by any sort of political ideology. So you got a lot of folks here doing work and trying to figure out what a faithful vision of Christian evangelicalism in the public square is that copes with the pressures of secularism and pluralism without surrendering a

Christian identity and without succumbing to sort of political ideology. So, I mean, if you're, if that sounds good to you, there's a lot of good folks doing work here. Yep. Yep. I'm a big fan of Denver Seminary. So you guys, yeah, you guys are doing great work. So thank you, Ryan. Thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate you. All right. Thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.