Some thoughts as I continue in my reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography, in the chapter : Berlin 1933, and the church protest and statements concerning the Ayran clause. Many Germans in the church were vocal in their support of nationalism in this matter. They accepted the premise of the acceptability of pre-emptive action against a threat whose veracity was “guaranteed” by the Reich.

In the year that Hitler came to official power, the church struggle was a consuming force in Bonhoefer’s activity. Much of the activity reminds one of the kinds of divisions today. I cannot subscribe to the notion that it is to be considered inappropriate to “compare” the political climate of Nazi germany with any subsequent era or society, merely on the basis of the “degree” of the evil unleashed. Evil is evil. Unjust and unChristian “consent” to “walk that wall for us” and do “whatever it takes” to “protect our way of life”; this is all evil in alternate guise, and under which, the church has the issue thrust before it as to what Kingdom it owes and shall give its loyalty.

The arguments for nationalism today seem so similar. For Hitler, his “waepons of mass destruction” was the “Bolshevik threat”, which was invoked as the theme and justification for Hitler’s expansionist dream, all in the name of the German’s security as a nation. This building on “threat” and “fear” and “protecting our way of life” is for me an ominous sign , and I agree with Hauerwas that violence draws its power from our fear of the stranger; that “ominous other” which precipitates paranoid reactions of murderous proportions. And we see Christians totally oblivious to this appeal to fear.