The Grey Book | Page 7

general tendency of this movement was directed
against Christianity as an ecclesiastical institution, sometimes chiefly
against the Catholic Church which was suspected of "ultramontanist"
sympathies for a foreign ecclesiastical power. Christianity was also
opposed as a system of beliefs and practices that tended to debilitate the
German Aryan race in its struggle for existence. Finally, Christianity
was opposed because of its Jewish origins which deteriorate the whole
human race by elevating spirit over body, rational thought over the
wisdom of the senses, abstract ideas over direct and spontaneous
experience, and the discursive intellect over the vital emotions. In the
course of this debate the antisemitic movement displayed a readiness to
reconcile itself to the continued existence of Christianity on condition
that it subsitute the biological values of the Aryan race for its Jewish
origins, as was recommended by the idealogues who made Jesus a
member of the Aryan race - Julius Langbehn, Max Bewer, Houston

Stewart Chamberlain, Leopold Werner, and the German Christians in
the days of the Third Reich. [25] We find the same line of
thought pursued by the followers of Duehring, such as Prof. Paul
Foerster, as well as in those circles connected with the antisemitic
journals, such as Heimdall, Freideutschland, Staatsburger Zeitung, also
some of the functionaries connected with the imperialist Der
Alldeutscher Verband, such as Friedrich Lange, the author of the
anti-Christian Reines Deutschtum (1893), and numerous writers,
historians, orientalists, scientists and students influenced by
anthropology, materialism and Darwinism. A popular exposition that
reveals the national and Romantic roots of this ideology appeared in the
Hammer (Oct. 1908), and reads in part as follows:
"What shall we do with a Christ whose kingdom is not of this world? A
Bluecher, a Gneisenau, a Koerner, an Arndt can always be useful for
Germany, but not a Christ. The God who was called upon at Leuthen,
Leipzig and Sedan was not the God of love, nor the God of Abraham.
Christ comforts the lowly, the weak and the sick. We too are sorry for
these poor folk and try to alleviate their condition; but they are of no
use to us and to our future. They only degrade that which we deem to
be the highest good - the German character. Strength, health, the joy of
life are what we need. The kingdom of Heaven can be left to the lowly
and the wretched, as long as we possess the earth. Give the Bible to the
sick and the lonely, the shut-ins and the scholars who wear their faces
on their backs!..." [26]
Similarly, the antisemitic propagandist, Dr. Ernst Wachler, writes in the
same journal (Jan. 1911):
"Away with the stones and tales, the doctrines and precepts of Jews as
well as of Christians!... Not only the free-thinkers, but our basic Aryan
instincts demand: the Church with all its trappings must be done away
with..." [27]

The available historical sources, including the documents collected in
this volume, clearly indicate that the protests of the Church against the

persecution of the Jews, with its human and ethical concern for their
fate, were an inseparable part of a more comprehensive opposition
directed against the pseudo-messianic and hence anti-Christian
character of Nazism. Seen in this context, the protest of the Church
gives rise to a number of historical and theological questions that
require further study. The questions that arise fall into three groups.
A. To what extent did the secularizing tendencies of the last century,
the rationalistic attacks on religion, the Romantic philosophies, pagan
mythology, Darwinism and the anthropological critique of religion,
contribute to the anti-Christian character of modern anti-semitism?
How did the process of secularization influence the teachings and art of
Richard Wagner, the Christian mythology of Houston St. Chamberlain,
Julius Langbehn, Ernst Bergmann and the movement of the "German
Christians", or the "Mythus" of Alfred Rosenberg? Can modem
historiography support the psychoanalytical Freudian explanation of
anti-Christian anti-Semitism in terms of a revival of vestigial pagan
elements which were latent in Christianity itself, and which
consequently revolted against the ethical Judaic basis of Christianity
and against the Jews who were now made responsible for all that
disturbed the Christian conscience?
From the vast literature that has grown up around these problems [28]
we see that side by side with the all-pervasive secularization of life
there were also historical and theological factors embedded in
Christianity which later turned against Christianity itself. Through
further study, we might find in the history of Christianity traditions
that originated in the barbarism of the pagan world, turned
anti-Christian by that very paganism, then continued as anti-Jewish
attitudes and policies on the part of the Christian world - and finally
culminating dialectically into a destructive force that was directed not
only against Judaism, but through Judaism against Humanity