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Something many Americans choose not to know about the Nazi period in Germany:

Hitler rose to power with the strong support of large numbers of German Christian leaders. Hitler came to power in a nation that was 95% Christian (63% Lutheran, 32% Catholic).

#Hitler #Nazis #churches #Christians #Catholic #Protestant #Trump #BishopBudde
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Protestant church leaders especially welcomed Hitler as a manly man anointed by God — they actually said and wrote this — who would purify the German nation and make it strong and manly again.

And what many Americans also choose not to know: when a very few courageous and faithful Christians chose to speak out, they were ruthlessly attacked by both the German state under Hitler and by their fellow German Christians.

#Hitler #Nazis #Christians #Catholic #Protestant #Trump #BishopBudde
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Just as Bishop Mariann Budde is now being attacked for speaking out.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and executed for speaking (and acting) against the German state as a Lutheran leader. In Austria, the lay Catholic Franz Jäggerstätter was imprisoned for refusing to enlist in the army because his conscience did not permit him to support the Nazis. Jäggerstätter was executed.

#Hitler #Nazis #Christians #Catholic #Protestant #Trump #BishopBudde #Bonhoeffer
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Bonhoeffer stated, by the way, that in the time he spent at Union Seminary in New York, he found the Black church in the US alive, spiritually profound, biblically faithful — but he found the white Christian churches in the US the opposite. He took back to Germany the inspiration he received from the Black church in the US and that was one of his guiding lights as he spoke out against the Nazis.

#Hitler #Nazis #Christians #Catholic #Protestant #Trump #BishopBudde #Bonhoeffer
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Pastors and priests whose sermons were considered in any way critical of the Nazi regime were reported to the authorities by people sitting in church to listen, to spy, to report.

If you Americans think we are not there now in our own time and place, if we think this could only have happened in Germany in the 1930s, then we're not seeing what's going on in our country now — with Christians leading the charge.

#Hitler #Nazis #Christians #Catholic #Protestant #Trump #BishopBudde #Bonhoeffer
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@wdlindsy if I could modify the term used, they are “self identified Christians”. Definitely not real ones.

@bryanbombardier I unfortunately disagree. These people say they are Christians, so they are Christians. It's not enough to say "they're not really Christians" as if the harm they're doing somehow is an aberration to ignore rather than a manifestation to resist. I think we have to realize that there are and always have been authoritarian Christians and (a smaller number of) non-authoritarian Christians.

@masingernd we can resist these aberrant folks. However, words have meaning. One cannot just claim to be part of a group then act antithetical to the purported group. Self reported is a logical adjective to use for these folks. Something like “self reported constitution following MAGA”.