From: mtdg9811@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Michael T. Dunphy)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal/New Age Religion (Was: Santeria and animal-sacrifice)
Date: 16 Nov 92 03:29:21 GMT
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana

johndunk@planet10.wpi.edu (John Dunkelberg) writes:

>hahahahahahahahahaha... please explain the Inquisition and the holocaust..

The holocaust certainly was not a Christian enterprise. Hitler made it
perfectly clear, in private, that he was not a Christian. For example:
  "Naturally, practical politics demands that, for the time being at least,
we must avoid any appearance of a campaign against the church." He was
careful to emphasize again that he was a Politiker, with no ambition to
become a prophet. But National Socialism, he said, was a Weltanschaung
and in fact a religion which was now building itself up and disseminating
itself, except that its forms of activity and of propaganda were
different. In ancient Rome, for example, Christianity had been able to
mobilize the masses in a way that the old polytheistic religions never
could. "And now in turn", he added, "National Socialism is able to
influence greater masses at once than the Church possibly can". ...
  "Oh yes, Ludecke, if you want to see my meaning illustrated, you need
only go to the funeral of a fallen Nazi and watch the Storm Troopers ranked
about the grave. Watch their faces, blank while the priest is reading the
service" - and here he stopped long enough to imitate a priest mumbling the
litany, fingering an imaginary rosary, and spreading his hands in blessing
(an excellent performance, as always) - and then see them light up when the
Nazi leader lifts the flag and begins to speak words of flame over the dead."
  "Yes, National Socialism is a form of conversion, a new faith, but we
don't need to raise that issue - it will come of itself. Just as I insist
on the mathematical certainty of our coming to power, because might always
attracts might, and the traditional wings, whether they be Right or Left,
constructive or destructive, will always attract all the activist elements,
leaving only a juiceless pulp in the middle - just so do I insist on the
certainty that sooner or later, once we hold the power, Christianity will
be overcome and the 'Deutsche Kirche' established. Yes, the German Church,
without a Pope and without the Bible - and Luther, if he could be with us,
would give us his blessing."
  "Hitler was ablaze now, and I could see the ideas of Rosenberg's Mythus
working in him. He shouted with passionate energy: 'Of course, I myself
am a heathen to the core!' ...
  "No, Ludecke, we don't need to declare this fight openly. It would be
political stupidity to show the masses too many enemies at once. The
political victory can only follow if the fight is concentrated against
the fewest possible number of enemies - for the time being, the Marxists
and the Jews. Then will come the turn of the Reaktion, and the end of that
will mean the end of the Christian Church - and the opening of our own
temples, our own shrines. The French Revolution, Bolshevism, all of Marxism,
in fact, our whole deformity and atrophy of spirit and soul would never have
come into being except for this oriental mummery, this cursed universalism
of Christianity which denies racialism and preaches suicidal tolerance" ...
   "Jesus Christus," he said thoughtfully, in a quieter, almost solemn
voice. "It is the tragedy of the Germanic world that no German 'Heiland'
was born amoung us; that our organic spiritual evolution was suddenly
violently interrupted; that Jesus was judaized, distorted, falsified, and
an alien Asiatic spirit was forced upon us. That is a crime we must repair."
(Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I knew Hitler, London, Jarrolds, 1938, pp. 465-6 --
quoted in Hitler's Speeches, Vol. 1, pp 369-370, edited by Norman H. Haines).
-- 
Michael Dunphy		dunphy@cs.uiuc.edu