by Brian Griffith
From Chapter 6, “Correcting Equality”, from the ms. of Correcting Jesus, by Brian Griffith
Oct. 9, 2008
The Backlash Against the Godless Rabble
Down to the reigns of Mussolini or Franco in the 1930s, possibly most people in Europe still assumed that absolute monarchies or military dictatorships were Christian, while rule by consent of the sinners was against God’s will. But after the French Revolution had scorched all Europe from Madrid to Moscow, things were never quite the same. The Pope returned to his Papal States and ordered the Jews back into their ghettos. But several other nations left the Jews free. Wherever people had tasted freedom of religion, or freedom from religion, the power of churches to punish dissent or enforce tithing slowly ebbed away. As Augustine feared, the churches were losing control of their flocks, because they lost control over who the people followed. Growing numbers of people turned to new ideologies or organizations like the Socialist Workers Union. They took their tithes from the churches and helped other causes instead. If they stopped coming to church at all, the clerics could do nothing but utter threats of hell.
Since most of us have forgotten the medieval moral universe, we may be impressed to see what the loss of state backing meant for formerly official churches. As Will Durant explains concerning medieval Sweden,
The Church required a tenth, annually, of all nonecclesiastical produce or income; it exacted a small fee for every building raised, every child born, every couple married, every corpse interred; it claimed a day of gratis labor from every peasant yearly; and no one could inherit property without making a contribution to the Church as the probate court of wills.[i]
In defending this monopoly on legally required sacrifices, the old churches counted it heresy for radical followers of St. Francis or the Beguines to treat religion as a service offered for free. And the popular response of rejecting state churches was a kind of taxpayer revolt. Like governments do, these churches tried to deny all right of taxpayers to rebel. They treated the rise of democracy as an anti-clerical plot, which would strip the churches of all authority, all wealth, and force God’s messengers to live like beggars in a secular humanist world. This was what “disestablishment” of the churches meant.
To battle this trend, in 1832 Pope Gregory XVI warned believers that freedom of conscience, worship, the press, assembly, and education, were nothing but “a filthy sewer of heretical vomit”. [ii] In 1864, as the secular Republic of Italy moved to “liberate” the Papal States, Pope Pius IX replied: “In these times the haters of truth and justice and the most bitter enemies of our religion deceive the people and lie maliciously”. He rejected any notion that “the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization”.[iii] As forces of the Republic advanced up to the gates of the Vatican, a great emergency council of bishops countered by adopting a new doctrine of papal infallibility. Instead of defining what values Christianity stood for, these bishops designated which human authority spoke for God. When Jesus had asked, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone”, he wasn`t claiming to be the ultimate authority all must obey. He was challenging everyone to try living by greater principles, such as equal regard for each person. But this new ruling on the Pope made it seem that Jesus’ religion demanded unconditional obedience to the chief priest.
When the governments of the Western world heard about the proclamation of papal infallibility, the reaction of was immediate. The USA cut off diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Germany, Austria, Italy and Belgium placed education under state control. Several nations banned religious orders, seized church property, and legalized secular marriage.[iv] As in ancient Rome, many Christians saw an unbridgeable conflict between patriotism and religion, unless the state patronized their religion.
Now quite suddenly, the official churches of Europe lost government aid in enforcing their decrees. During the 1700s in Anglican England, it was still a law of the land that “if any person … shall by writing … deny the Christian religion to be true, he shall … for the second offense … suffer three years imprisonment without bail”.[v] Who stripped the churches of power to enforce anything? Whatever forces were responsible were clearly worse enemies of God than any common criminal. How was a church to handicap its competitors for popular support? How could it fight those who enticed parishioners to support other organizations? Many church leaders accused the Freemasons for their woes. They said the Freemasons were a secret society of atheists and Jews, dedicated to organizing anti-clerical revolutions. As Pope Pius IX accused, “It is from them that the synagogue of Satan, which gathers its troops against the Church of Christ, takes its strength”.[vi] For Pius and other conservative church leaders, the rising Communist and socialist labor movements were all part of this Freemason-Jewish conspiracy to destroy Western civilization.
By enormous contrast, large numbers of lower-ranking Christians welcomed and served the modern world’s popular movements for greater social equality. The anti-slavery movement was almost entirely driven by idealistic lay Christians. While Black protesters claimed that Moses and Jesus stood for equality, their White supporters helped build the first global movement of protest for other people’s rights.[vii] A door had opened, as godly autocratic governments declined, for lay Christians to take leadership roles — not so much within their churches, but in public affairs. In 1837, for example, an assembly of German Catholics gathered in Mainz, whose president, Franz Josef Buss, proposed an agenda for the nation, which he hoped all Christians would support. The main points were:
1. Legal limitations on the hours of work, to protect families,
2. A ban on night labor for children,
3. Protection of Sunday as a day of rest, and
4. Health care and accident insurance for all workers, to be funded through employee and employer contributions.[viii]
Basically, Buss was acting as any good father might. The remarkable thing was he wished to treat the whole of Germany as he would have his own family treated. Numerous Christians objected that such an agenda violated “biblical values” such as economic freedom, personal accountability, or the separation of earthly politics from heavenly religion. But by the 1880’s, even a “man of blood and iron” like Chancellor Bismarck would feel it necessary to steal thunder from his “Christian democratic” critics, by enacting reforms such as disability insurance and old-age pensions.
Such agitation from laypeople led to something unthinkable in the previous age — Christian political parties. And these were composed mainly of activist rather than passively obedient Christians. In the fledgling democracies of Europe, Italy had its Christian “Partito Populare”, and Germany its Catholic “Center Party”. These political parties commanded substantial blocks of support, and could make or break ruling coalitions. Poland would see something similar in the 1970s with its Solidarity party. But in the early 20th century, these parties of activist Christians faced an autocratic backlash from both their churches and states. Neither the heads of Europe’s churches nor rising politicians like Mussolini and Hitler wanted uncontrolled popular movements of lay Christians. From his side, Pope Pius XII denounced “laicism” as a threat to clerical authority.
During the 1920s and 30s, the Vatican negotiated agreements with the dictatorships of both Italy and Germany. In both agreements the church received state protection and support, in exchange for renouncing any role in politics. The 1929 pact with Mussolini’s government gave land and money to the church, plus recognizing church canon law to govern family and religious matters among Catholics. The price was an agreement to disband the Partito Populare, and exile its leader Don Luigi Sturzo. The Pope (Pius XI) urged Christians to support the Fascist party against godless socialism, calling Mussolini “a man sent by Providence”.[ix] In Germany, Adolph Hitler observed, “The fact that the Curia is now making peace with Fascism shows that the Vatican trusts the new political realities far more than it did the former liberal democracy with which it could not come to terms.”[x] As Hitler explained his own treaty with Germany’s churches in 1933, “In consideration of the guarantees afforded by the conditions of this treaty, and of legislation protecting the rights and freedom of the Catholic Church in the Reich …, the Holy See will ensure a ban on all clergy and members of religious congregations from political party activity”.[xi]
We might think this was a modern policy for separating church and state. But this separation of powers actually worked in an opposite way to the separation of church and state in North America. In North America the government pledged not to patronize any particular religion, but left all citizens free to voice their beliefs. But the German and Italian agreements offered state patronage to recognized churches, while denying the church members any right to speak of their values in public. Basically, the old order was restored. Subordinates should initiate nothing without authorization from above. All right of subordinates to criticize their superiors was denied. Morality was defined as obedience to superiors in both the church and state, rather than as devotion to moral principles. In such a moral universe there was no such thing as inferiors holding their superiors accountable.
The church members soon learned the price of a purely non-political role for religion. When some of them dared break their silence to oppose shocking abuse of ethnic and political minorities, Hitler shot back, “When they attempt by any other means — writings, encyclals, etc. — to assume rights which belong only to the state, we will push them back into their own proper spiritual activity”.[xii] As under tyrants of the past, many Christian leaders counselled a pious but convenient separation between ethics for the sacred and mundane realms.
Under the Nazi regime, most Catholics proved disturbingly submissive. But Hitler was right to worry about traditional Christian values. Some dangerously large demonstrations of Catholics demanded an end to euthanasia for handicapped people, or to killing Christians of Jewish ancestry. Far fewer Christians risked their lives to protest mass murder of Jews and Communists. The most morally principled religious group was the Jehovah Witnesses, of whom 90% went to prison or died for refusing to obey unjust orders. But the Protestants were the most obedient. As historian A.J.P. Taylor tried to explain it, “Lutheranism, at first a movement of Reform, became, and remained, the most conservative of religions; though it preached the absolute supremacy of the individual conscience within, it preached an equally absolute supremacy for the territorial power without”.[xiii] According to Gerald Strauss, traditional Lutheran educators sought to instill faithful abdication of moral responsibility: “… their model Christian was an essentially passive being prepared to acquiesce rather than struggle, distrustful of his own inclinations and reluctant to act on them … hesitant to proceed when no one guided him, certain only of his own weakness as a creature and of the mortal peril of his condition as a sinner”.[xiv]
Many Christians in Fascist Europe saw Franco, Mussolini and Hitler as restorers of a properly Christian continent, in which the heretical slogan of “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality” was finally erased. Instead, both church and state would instill duty to “Fatherland, Family, Work”. In supporting Franco’s crusade to overthrow the secular humanist Spanish Republic, Hitler called on the Lord: “Let us thank God, the Almighty, that he has blessed our generation and us, and granted us to be part of this time and this hour”.[xv] Later, many Christians saw the Nazi attack on Russia as a great crusade to destroy the faith’s Communist-Jew enemies. The Vatican saw an opportunity for eastward expansion, and set up a Congregation for the Eastern Churches under Cardinal Eugène Tisserant. Where fascist powers conquered traditionally Eastern Orthodox regions like Serbia or Ukraine, there was talk of a new unified Christendom. In many churches all this passed for something Jesus would approve. But Hitler showed greater awareness of the real relationship between traditional Christian values and those of his enemies: “Christianity is the hardest blow that ever hit humanity. Bolshevism is the bastard son of Christianity; both are the monstrous issue of the Jews”.[xvi]
At Christmas of 1944, as an overwhelming coalition of democratic and communist allies moved to liberate Europe, Pope Pius XII gave belated acceptance for rule by consent of the rabble. He was willing to recognize “any of the various forms of government, provided they are in themselves adapted to secure the welfare of the citizens”. But since the masses could lose their way, he said democracy alone would prove unworkable unless the people accepted guidance by the clergy. A proper role for the clergy, he said, “communicates that supernatural strength of grace which is needed to implement the absolute order established by God, that order which is the ultimate foundation and guiding norm for every democracy”.[xvii]
Even in the USA, many Christians warned that popular will must be checked by an ultimate authority. As the Fundamentalist textbook America’s Providential History pointed out, “Even if Christians manage to outnumber others on an issue and we sway our Congressmen by sheer numbers, we end up in a dangerous promotion of democracy. We really do not want representatives who are swayed by majorities, but rather by correct principles”.[xviii] What principles were those? Were they principles about obeying higher authorities, or about treating other people as equals? Immanuel Kant had described the greatest principle as trying to live as he would want everyone else to live. But Kant was commonly seen as a semi-Christian, who didn’t really accept the Bible’s final authority.
Down to the 20th century, probably most Christians still took religion much as the Romans did — as if the main question in life was “Which master will I serve?”. For many Protestants, the infallible guide was a book rather than an institution. As Carl F.H. Henry explained, Christianity was faith that “The Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety, is the word of God written, and therefore inerrant in the autographs”.[xix] Where Jesus repeatedly shocked the scriptural literalists of Israel with his criticism of biblical traditions, these new Pharisees insisted that the book was unquestionable. Such religion offered infallible guidance by a superhuman authority. Without that, people would feel forced to decide for themselves what was right.
Many Christians of the post-war “free world” continued to treat submission to higher authority as the main point of their religion.[xx] They continued stressing Bible verses in which God seems to favor submissive sheep over free adults. In such Christianity, the core religious teachings seemed to be:
1. Obedience to superiors, because obedience was itself virtuous, and
2. Repression of any conflicting thoughts or emotions.
Of course for normal people to accept such constraint on their hearts and minds, they first had to be shamed into “self-denial”. They had to feel, not just that they were guilty of making mistakes, but that they could not help but make them — because their very being was defective, and their minds could not be trusted.[xxi]
After WWII, Christianity grew more evenly split on the issues of human equality. In Spain, Franco’s militants slowly lost their reputation as the party of God, despite the fervent support of Opus Dei. The defenders of British, French, or Dutch colonial empires appeared increasingly less spiritual than the rebels for independence. In the USA or South Africa, law-breakers for racial equality eventually gained recognition as heroes rather than enemies of Christian civilization. But meanwhile, Christians of the Western world increasingly united in opposition to the Communist movement for “sharing all things”. And rather than attack the dictatorial means which corrupted communist ideals in Russia, a large segment of Western Christians rallied to oppose all movements for greater social and economic equality. In that case, defending the rights of private property became a fundamental tenet of Jesus’ religion, which trumped concern for dispossessed people. The various movements for social equality in post-colonial Africa, Asia or Latin America appeared as anti-Christian threats against the West. That view helped justify, not only the Cold War’s massive weapons spending, but a whole series of military “counter-insurgency” or “contra” operations across the Southern world. In supporting these wars, vast numbers of Western Christians seemed to accept that what’s good for international corporations is good for God and country.
[i] Durant, Will, The Reformation, 621.
[ii] De Rosa, Peter, Vicars of Christ, 146.
[iii] Kertzer, David I., The Popes Against the Jews, 126–127.
[iv] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 14–15.
[v] Durant, Will and Ariel, Rousseau and Revolution, 801.
[vi] Kertzer, David I., The Popes Against the Jews, 126–127.
[vii] Hawken, Paul, Blessed Unrest, 5.
[viii] Chadwick, Owen, “Christianity and Industrial Society”, The Christian World: A Social and Cultural History, 254.
[ix] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 114.
[x] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 115.
[xi] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 147, 197.
[xii] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 183.
[xiii] Taylor, A.J.P., “The Course of German History”, cited in Derfler, Leslie, editor, An Age of Conflict: Readings in Twentieth-Century European History, Second edition, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Toronto, 1997, © 1990, 118.
[xiv] Strauss, Gerald, Luther’s House of Learning, 136.
[xv] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 202–203.
[xvi] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 261–263.
[xvii] Cornwall, John, Hitler’s Pope, 327–328.
[xviii] Mark A. Beliles and Stephen K. McDowell, America’s Providential History, c. 1989, p. 265, cited by Hedges, Chris, American Fascists, 180.
[xix] Carl F.H. Henry, in an opening address to the Evangelical Theological Society in 1949, cited by Hart, D.G., Deconstructing Evangelicalism, 131–132.
[xx] Fox, Matthew, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh, 177.
[xxi] Bradshaw, John, Creating Love, 26, 58, 89.