Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x5gtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-01T01:55:43.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Above the Confessions

Bridging the Religious Divide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2013

Richard Steigmann-Gall
Affiliation:
Kent State University, Ohio
Get access

Summary

We all say a Lord's Prayer, we all have a Savior, we all have a Christmas celebration. The banner above both confessions is: Christianity.

Hans Schemm

The Protestant League stands very close to the NSDAP. It is consciously German and, through moral and religious power, wants to contribute to the building up of the German people.

Hans Schemm

When incorporating different strands of Christian antisemitism or socialism, Nazis spoke in undifferentiated, nonconfessional terms. In large part this was one of the very purposes of positive Christianity: to bridge the religious divide by making no specific references to a particular confessional bias. Any direct allusion to a particular theological lineage would have worked against the priority of the nation. Insofar as this allowed the NSDAP to appeal to all of Germany's Christians, it had potential as an effective political strategy. However, it was also central to the inner logic of their worldview: By appealing to what the Nazis regarded as the commonalities that joined Protestants and Catholics, they hoped to unify the nation and end a long, often bloody history of sectarianism in Germany. In this sense, the Nazis undoubtedly put the nation above confession, but in ways strikingly similar to those attempted by prior generations of German nationalists. This goal notwithstanding, the sectarian fault line that ran through German society – illustrated in conceptions of Luther and the Reformation – could be found within the Nazi movement as well.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Holy Reich
Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945
, pp. 51 - 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×