The gospel is political. Get over it. If you hear your pastor preaching “politics” from the pulpit, thank her/him for speaking a prophetic word to this time of social, political and economic unrest. If members of your community are bent out of shape because “they don’t come to church to hear politics” tell them to get over themselves. In short, kwitcherbitchin’.
The American church stands at a critical crossroad. It can embrace the moment and speak a prophetic word, or it can remain an institution that maintains the status quo. And that status quo gets scarier by the day.
Doing nothing means we will repeat history. In the Germany of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s the Christian church was essentially missing in action. There were a few notable exceptions and I’ll say more about that later.
In the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII failed to condemn Nazism although he had credible knowledge of the slaughter of Jews early on. The library of Pius XII was briefly opened in February of 2020 and documents show that a US diplomat gave the Vatican a secret report on the mass murder of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. Despite corroborating documents, the Vatican report to the diplomat was that the report could not be confirmed. Following the war, the Roman Catholic Church (with covert assistance from the United States) helped former Nazi leaders flee to South America. It is worth noting that Pius XII is a candidate for canonization.
Lest we think the Protestant Church fared much better, churches throughout Germany and Europe were largely silent. Victoria J. Bennet, in an article for the Anti-Defamation League, notes the failure to respond was not due to ignorance, it was a “lapse in vision and determination.”
Barnett goes on to say, “In any examination of the German churches statements from this era, what is most striking is their painstaking attempt to say, publicly, neither too much or too little about what was happening around them. Needless to say, this ruled out any consistent or emphatic response to the Nazi’s persecution of Jews and others. And institutional inaction gave individual Christians throughout Germany an alibi for passivity.”
The actions of German churches were primarily based on institutional interests that were narrowly defined and desperately short sighted. Barnett notes there was institutional introspection “to the point of near numbness.” While innocent victims throughout Europe were being brutally murdered, Christian leaders were debating what points of doctrine and policy were tenable. As the old saying goes, “the church fiddles with her skirts while Rome burns.”
Most notably, the German Christian Movement actively embraced Nazism and tried to Nazify Christianity by suppressing the Old Testament, revising liturgies and hymns and promoting Jesus (a brown skinned Middle Eastern man) as an Aryan hero who embodied the ideals of the new Germany. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots between the German Christian Movement and much of American Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism. White supremacy has long found a home in certain expressions of “Christianity.” It makes true evangelicals, and the Church as a whole, look very bad.
The Christian Church in the United States faces similar challenges and opportunities. Similar to the challenges of the Weimar Republic (the German government between 1918 and the beginning of Nazi Germany in 1933), the United States is facing an unprecedented time of social, political and economic unrest.
A global pandemic, the great political divide, an insurrection (with threats of future violence), an economic system that is untenable for millions of Americans and a health care system that is on the brink of collapse present an opportunity for the American Christian church to step up to the plate and be the Church.
If this opportunity is missed, the church will continue to be on the cutting edge of obsolescence. And it will deserve it.
Being the church in these days means being courageous. It means finding our voice and speaking up, as persons of faith, against the actions of white supremacists who wrap their hatred in a thin veil of “Christianity.” Every pulpit in the country should be educating and preaching the truth that ours is a God of love and justice and restoration. Every pulpit in the country should be actively denouncing the actions of those who stormed the Capitol as having nothing to do with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Every single House Member and Senator who tried to derail the Electoral Vote count should be forced to resign. Your voice, your letter, your phone call or e-mail is crucial. The list is here https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22218058/republicans-objections-election-results. Take the time. Yes, we are all busy. But nothing less than the integrity of the church’s witness and the future of our Republic are at stake.
If your Senators or Representatives favored the removal or impeachment of the occupant, please call, write or e-mail and thank them. You know they are getting volumes of hate mail; be a voice of reason and gratitude.
Be the notable exception I referenced earlier. During the Nazi reign of terror there were Christians who sheltered Jews, clerics who preached the gospel and people of faith who protested against the Nazis. Be those people in this time. Martin Niemoller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and ten thousand other priests, monks and ministers went to the death camps for the sake of the Gospel. Two hundred thousand Christians were behind the barbed wire of the death camps by the second year of Hitler’s reign.
I hope it doesn’t come to that for those of us who profess the name of Christ. At the very least, let us speak truth to power, which is the true definition of prophecy, and refuse to back down because some find it unpopular or offensive. Stand on the right side of history. Silence is complicity. Silence sides with the oppressor.
As Martin Niemoller wrote:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me-
and there was no one left to speak for me.”
The Irreverent Reverend 