Historiography of Antisemitism versus Anti-Judaism: A Response to Robert Morgan

Responding to Robert Morgan’s plaidoyer for Christianity by claiming a distinction between theological anti-Judaism and modern, racial antisemitism, this article demonstrates that the texts of pro-Nazi German Protestant theologians integrate race and religion with a fluidity that obviates a sharp distinction between the two terms. Antisemitic propaganda produced by Christian theologians during World War II leaves the strictly theological realm in its use of Nazi language and concepts, even when framed in a Christian context, and demands a different kind of conceptualization by historians. Why a group of theologians—professors, instructors, students, pastors and bishops—sought the dejudaization of Christianity during the Third Reich requires attentiveness by historians to the affinities these theologians thought they recognized between Christianity and the claims of modern racial theorists. General historians of Nazi social history will benefit from greater awareness of the racialization of significant sectors of the Christian community in Germany, and students of postwar German theology will benefit from considering the legacy of the pre-1945 Nazification of certain university theological faculties as well as Nazi-era racial tendencies in certain strands of theological scholarship.

[1]  M. Ruff.  Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism , 2011 .

[2]  B. Hamm,et al.  Spielräume des Handelns und der Erinnerung: Die Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche in Bayern und der Nationalsozialismus , 2010 .

[3]  Kevin P. Spicer.  Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and National Socialism , 2008 .

[4]  S. Heschel.  The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany , 2008 .

[5]  Donald L. Niewyk.  The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust , 2007, Central European History.

[6]  Fr..  Vogelwelt und Ameisen , 2006, Anzeiger für Schädlingskunde.

[7]  J. Conway.  Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin (review) , 2005 .

[8]  Samuel Lamerson.  Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew , 2005 .

[9]  D. Buell.  Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity , 2005 .

[10]  David L. Chappell.  A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow , 2005 .

[11]  Matthew D. Hockenos.  A Church Divided: German Protestants Confront the Nazi Past , 2004 .

[12]  Kevin P. Spicer.  Resisting the Third Reich: The Catholic Clergy in Hitler's Berlin , 2004 .

[13]  James E. Mcnutt.  Adolf Schlatter and the Jews , 2003 .

[14]  K. King.  The Gospel of Mary of Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle , 2003 .

[15]  M. Greschat.  Die evangelische Christenheit und die deutsche Geschichte nach 1945 : Weichenstellungen in der Nachkriegszeit , 2002 .

[16]  Victoria J. Barnett,et al.  And the Witnesses Were Silent: The Confessing Church and the Persecution of the Jews , 2000 .

[17]  S. Heschel.  Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus , 1998 .

[18]  D. Bergen.  Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich , 1996 .

[19]  D. Bankier.  The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion Under Nazism , 1994 .

[20]  S. Witter.  Inside Nazi Germany: conformity, opposition and racism in everyday life , 1988 .

[21]  W. Gerlach.  Als die Zeugen schwiegen : Bekennende Kirche und die Juden , 1987 .

[22]  Brian Duckworth.  Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch , 1987 .

[23]  Lionel Kochan.  The Roots of Anti-Semitism: In the Age of Renaissance and Reformation , 1985 .

[24]  Robert P. Ericksen.  Theologians Under Hitler , 1985 .

[25]  R. Wilken,et al.  The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity@@@John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century , 1985 .

[26]  L. Siegele-Wenschkewitz.  Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft vor der Judenfrage : Gerhard Kittels theologische Arbeit im Wandel deutscher Geschichte , 1980 .

[27]  A. Beyerchen,et al.  Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich , 1977 .

[28]  Walter E. Bauer,et al.  Orthodoxy and heresy in earliest Christianity , 1971 .

[29]  K. Stauffer.  Das Reich der Deutschen , 1911 .