Would it change anything? Its not a quote I made up, and is a commonly known one. The reason for the Nazi like decree by Isabella was given as BETTER TO DESTROY THEIR BODIES THEREBY GIVING THEM SALVATION FOR THEIR SOULS. Gee thanks - same to you too! European Christianity should be made mandatory teaching in all history classes.
BOOK DEBATE: Hitler and Christianity
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Would it change anything? Its not a quote I made up, and is a commonly known one. The reason for the Nazi like decree by Isabella was given as BETTER TO DESTROY THEIR BODIES THEREBY GIVING THEM SALVATION FOR THEIR SOULS. Gee thanks - same to you too! European Christianity should be made mandatory teaching in all history classes.
You are doing that.
Knock-knock! The Pope Pius is being considered for sainthood - with a host of Jews protesting.
Is this who you are referring to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Isabelle_of_France
This one was long dead by 1492
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Isabelle_of_France
This one was long dead by 1492
which one 3 pope Piuses have been beatified the first the tenth and I belive the fifth
No you are. there is no Saint Isabella. the only branch that would have one would be roman catholic and they have no saint Isabella
If you make devils as saints - you end up with devilish saints. I say this for the benefit of today's christians. Denial will only repeat itself - as is adequately evidenced throughout European history.
so in other words you have called 2 people who aren't saints saints in an effort to attack christianity. also you do know pius the 12th I believe name is in the Vad Yeshum or whatever its called.
Nothing wrong with my use of the language nor should I eat my hat. There is nothing logical about sky fairies and invisible super beings. Please explain the logic there if you can.
How can one be attacking christianity, instead of saving it - when one suggests that two horrific humans cannot be considered as saints? The error is hardly whether they were officially deemed as saints or not - your non-credible focus, instead of the deeds of these bad people - your non-credible avoidance from the fundamental issue?
Why are honest christians organising protest movements of such decisions instead of being as you - silent and also attacking the victims? I suspect your true alliegence is not with Christians but their true enemies: one who denies the Jewish temple existed - a clear negation of the Gospels and history.
being a saint is not about being a good person its about advancing christianity.
Screw you your delibrate dishonest framing of them as saints is germane.
I'm not. your poor delueded creature you really need to get your head out of your ass and quit attacking people and faiths.
well considering I'm not a christian why would I
whatever your opinion is worthless considering your inability to deal with historical factbut their true enemiesne who denies the Jewish temple existed - a clear negation of the Gospels and history.
Not precisely true. Do weak animals and plants exist? Yes, they do. Strength isn't necessarily fitness.
Chemistry is also inherently devoid of ethics, but somehow we don't point to the study of chemistry as a road to immorality.
Traditional ethics did in fact arise due to natural selection, so how about that?
It only appears that way because nature is indifferent. Yet among animals, altruism exists. Ancient human societies that predated modern religion also cared for their sick and infirm. You should look into the evolution of altruism, it negates your whole premise.
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Wilhelm Kube
He remained an active Christian despite being a zealous Nazi, and in 1932 he organized the list of candidates of the Faith Movement of the German Christians for the ordinary election of presbyters and synodals within the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union on 13 November that year. The German Christians then gained about a third of all seats in presbyteries and synods. Kube was elected as one of the presbyters of the congregation of Gethsemane Church in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg. The presbyters elected him from their midst as synodal into the competent deanery synod (German: Kreissynode; Berlin then comprised 11 deaneries altogether), and these synodals again elected him a member of deanery synodal board (German: Kreissynodalvorstand). When in 1933 the Nazis came to power he remained active in the German Christian movement which sought to "Nazify" the 28 Protestant church bodies in Germany.[1] For 23 July 1933 Hitler ordered an unconstitutional, premature re-election of all presbyters and synodals, with the German Christians now gaining 70-80% of the seats, so Kube could then further advance as head of the Berlin synod of the old-Prussian Church. Following the German conquest of Poland in 1939 his Nazi party domain was extended to include Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia and Reichsgau Wartheland.[wikipedia entry]
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Erich Koch
Koch was one of the few Nazi party leaders to consider himself a professing Christian.[8] In addition to his political career, Koch was also the elected president of the East Prussian Protestant Church Synod.[8] Although Koch gave preference to the Deutsche Christen movement over traditional Protestantism, his contemporaries regarded Koch as a bona fide Christian, whose success in his church career could be attributed to his commitment to the Lutheran faith.[8]
Koch officially resigned his church membership in 1943, but in his post-war testimony he stated: "I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from a basic Prussian-Protestant attitude and from Luther's unfinished Protestant Reformation".[8] On the 450th Anniversary of Luther's birth (10 November 1933), Koch spoke on the circumstances surrounding Luther's birthday. He implied that the Machtergreifung was an act of divine will and stated that both Luther and Hitler struggled in the name of belief.[8] [wikipedia entry]
Koch officially resigned his church membership in 1943, but in his post-war testimony he stated: "I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from a basic Prussian-Protestant attitude and from Luther's unfinished Protestant Reformation".[8] On the 450th Anniversary of Luther's birth (10 November 1933), Koch spoke on the circumstances surrounding Luther's birthday. He implied that the Machtergreifung was an act of divine will and stated that both Luther and Hitler struggled in the name of belief.[8] [wikipedia entry]
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Allow me to quote from the conclusion of Steigmann-Gall's book:
It is apparent that certain presumptions about Nazism will never fully disappear. If for no other reason, Nazism serves as a useful foil, a way of gauging good and evil in the world. We are given to presuming that the things we dislike in modern society must have reigned triumphant in Nazism. In fact, what we suppose Nazism must surely have been about usually tells us as much about contemporary societies as about the past purportedly under review. The insistence that Nazism was an anti-Christian movement has been one of the most enduring truisms of the past 50 years. It started as a preconception even before the movement gained power and only gained strength after the war. For Western societies intent on rebuilding themselves after the worst devastation in world history and facing a new atheistic "menace", it could be argued that preserving this truism was a political necessity. The unprecedented polarity in which the postwar world found itself and the almost crusadelike mentality of the Western establishment at the time hardly provided a warm home for critical self-examination. Exporing the possibility that many Nazis regarded themselves as Christian would have decisively undermined the myths of the Cold War and the regeneration of the German nation that the metaphor of the Stunde Null (zero hour) so precisely represented.
Even as other conceptions of Nazism - either as capitalist smoke screen or medieval anachronism - have falled under the weight of empirical scrutiny, this particular preconception seems as firmly entrenched as ever. In one sense this is entirely understandable. Nearly all Western societies retain a sense of Christian identity to this day. Moral boundries are still in some measure drawn by biblical stricture and other forms of Christian social ethic. That Nazism as the world-historical metaphor for human evil and wickedness should in some way have been related to Christianity can therefore be regarded by many only as unthinkable. Christianity is not just a theological system; it is also a byword for moral and upstanding behavior of any kind. This is especially evident in the contemporary United States, where acts regarded as immoral, improper, or unethical are sanctioned as un-Christian, no matter how Christian the perpetrator or the motivation. This pedestrian usage of the phrase "Christian," no less significant for being ill defined, serves to reinforce the theological argument that the evil of Nazism surely bears no relation to the beauty and magnificence of the Christian religion in whatever form.
But men of God have been responsible for numerous acts of aggression and murder born of prejudice. The Crusades, Inquisition, and Apartheid, to name only the most obvious historical episodes, are generally regarded as "un-Christian" moments, even though it was piously Christian men who devised them and carried them through. Of course in a Christian society, the best way to attack intolerance of any kind, most particularly antisemitism, is to argue that it is anti-Christian. However, although the ethical value of this stance is self-evident, when it is transposed onto historical analysis problems emerge. Moral instruction quickly becomes historical apologia. The desire to shape a morally upstanding populous too often implies the suppression of difficult truths. By detaching Christianity from the crimes of it's adherents, we create a Christianity above history, a Christianity whose teachings need not be ultimately investigated. Seen in this light, those who have committed such acts must have misunderstood Christianity, or worse yet purposefully misused it for their own ends. "Real Christians" do not commit such crimes. "Real Christianity" is about loving one's neighbor and the righteousness of the meek. But there is another side of the coin. As the theologian Richard Rubenstein puts it, "The world of the death camps and the society it engenders reveals the progressively intensifying night side of Judeo-Christian civilization. Civilization means slavery, wars, exploitation, and death camps. It also means medical hygiene, elevated religious ideas, beautiful art, and exquisite music." Christianity, in other words, may be the source of some of the same darkness it abhors.
There is a danger in depicting any aspect of Nazism as "normal." However, the corollary to such an admission is not that Nazism is somehow redeemable, but rather that it is much closer to us than we dare allow ourselves to believe. The discovery that so many Nazis considered themselves or their movement to be Christian makes us similarly uncomfortable. But the very unpleasantness of this fact makes it all the more important to look it squarely in the face.
What discovery?
You still have not answered this:
I have never seen any but that would at least give some credibility. What the Nazi's did to Polish people and Russians is similarly hard to explain but the majority of them were certainly not Jewish.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_were_most_religions_in_the_concentration_camps
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Your argument is a common one, that the Christians that supported the Nazis (and there were millions), were not true Christians, but your standard sets the bar rather high... "such concepts... do not constitute a reliable gauge, as others whose Christian credentials are undisputed would similarly fail to pass.". Certainly they considered themselves to be so.
It was a protestant institution, the Inner Mission, that advocated eugenics and had an explicit mission to bridge the gulf between rationalist science and nonrationalist faith, "especially with regard to heredity and race". The scientist Bernhard Bavnik was especially concerned with reconciling faith and science. Bavnik explained that population and race have the same standing in theology as the individual, so that it deserves the same protection from extermination. They supported laws in 1932 to decriminalize eugenic sterilization, and the sterilization of "asocial" people. When the Nazis passed a much stronger version of the law in 1933, the Inner Mission proceeded to voluntarily sterilize inmates in it's own asylums, free from coercion by the Nazi state.
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying , Speak unto Aaron, saying , Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach : a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose , or any thing superfluous , Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy. Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them. And Moses told it unto Aaron, and to his sons, and unto all the children of Israel.
Such a premise only rationalises a bad premise. One cannot prescribe death to another while claiming this helps their religion and has nothing to do with the victim.
More germaine is your omission I posted a host of christians who reject any notion of a saint attached to attrocious crimes and doctrines.
I only deal with historical facts throughout this forum. Muslim Palestineans and the Jewish temple being a zionist myth are not historical facts but Islamic notions of the history of some other fictional planet. The name Palestine was dumped on the Jewish homeland of Judea - not an Islamic or Arab land; Jerusalem is a Hebrew name established by Hebrews - not an Islamic caliphate.
Europe conducted two holocausts, one in 70 CE and one in the 1940's; Islam is panting for its own by its self declared agenda against all infidels. Both of Europe's holocaust doctrines were based on the same doctrine of heresy - a Roman and a Christian one. The doctrines embedded in the Gospels and Quran are racist and in contradiction of the given doctrine all humanity stems from one host couple and have equal, inalienable human rights. One of them thar doctrines has to go if humanity is to prevail.
Steigmann-Gall's book is scholarly? In the index and book there is no or almost no reference whatever to many German thinkres such as Wagner, Schopenhauer, H.S. Chamberlain, Fichte, Kant, and others who did not believe in biblical Christianity but articulated many ideas that helped to make up National Socialism.
It is a very dishonest book full of lies and distortions.
It's a quote from a novel by Goebbels.
I ask for something from the Sermon on the Mount and I get a quote from Goebbels. I thought these secularists were supposed to be such intellectuals.
Moreover, Steigmann-Gall takes a quote from Goebbels' novel to show the nazi origins of Christianity without stating that the character in the novel rejected Christianity, condemned it is inadequaste to the nations' needs, and turned to National Socialism instead.
I don't know if S-G did this because he did not even read the book at all, or if he read it but knew very well what he was saying was false.