A Christian is not allowed to be an antisemite, and he is not allowed to be a moderate antisemite. The Church ought to live of love. Woe to her if she adopts words and slogans that originate in the sphere of hatred . . . At p. 431 ff., from Pastor Walter Hochstadter's letter. Goldhagen's explanation for the churches' behavior in failing to oppose forcefully Nazi antisemitism brings us closer to an understanding of structural violence, forgiveness, and loving than we are wont to choose.
Structural violence is violence without specific intent to harm another.
The violence emanates from the rigidity of categorization and rules which force humans to fit into limitations inappropriate to their skills and needs. Goldhagen suggests that the churches did not support the violence to Jews, for that would have been counter to their own tenets and beliefs. They neither wanted nor condoned the horrific results. The churches expected that the Nazis would establish an authoritarian regime that would reclaim the wrongly dishonored virtues of unquestioning obedience and submission to authority, restore the cultivation of traditional moral values, and enforce adherence to them. Alas, things are rarely so simple.