page_title: Positive Christianity
section_title: In Nazi ideology
hierarchical_section_title: Positive Christianity / In Nazi ideology
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Alfred Rosenberg, Ideologe und Politiker des Hitlerfaschismus. geb. 12.1.1893 in Reval (Tallin), gest. (als Kriegsverbrecher hingerichtet) 16.10.1946 in Nürnberg. [Foto: FF Bauer, Berlin&#160;?] Information added by Wikimedia users."FF Bauer" is SS photographer Friedrich Franz Bauer (1903-1972), well-known for his propaganda photos of the Dachau concentration camp and as Himmler's personal photographer.
context_page_description: Positive Christianity was a movement within Nazi Germany which mixed the belief that the racial purity of the German people should be maintained by mixing Nazi ideology with elements of Christianity. Adolf Hitler used the term in article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, stating: "the Party represents the standpoint of Positive Christianity". Nondenominational, the term could be variously interpreted. The Nazi movement had been hostile to Germany's established churches. The new Nazi idea of Positive Christianity allayed the fears of Germany's Christian majority by implying that the Nazi movement was not anti-Christian. That said, in 1937, Hans Kerrl, the Nazi Minister for Church Affairs, explained that "Positive Christianity" was not "dependent upon the Apostle's Creed", nor was it dependent on "faith in Christ as the son of God", upon which Christianity relied, rather, it was represented by the Nazi Party: "The Führer is the herald of a new revelation", he said. To accord with Nazi antisemitism, positive Christianity advocates also sought to deny the Semitic origins of Christ and the Bible.
context_section_description: Positive Christianity was highly supported by the Nazi movement, which promoted its ideals in its journals Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter, both of which stressed the "Nordic" character of Jesus. However, the party was careful to stress that positive Christianity was not intended to be a third confession, nor to contradict the traditional theologies of established churches. As early as 1920 the Nazis proclaimed in their 25-point program that the "Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us". Despite this, a number of Nazis openly challenged the established churches.
  Alfred Rosenberg, editor of Völkischer Beobachter, wrote The Myth of the Twentieth Century, in which he argued that the Catholic and Protestant churches had distorted Christianity in such a way that the "heroic" and "Germanic" aspects of Jesus's life had been ignored. For Rosenberg, positive Christianity was a transitional ideology that would pave the way to build a new fully racialist faith. Instead of the cross, its symbol was the orb of the sun in the form of a sun cross and in principle it was the elevation of the Nordic race, a rejection of divine revelation, and the promotion of a German god. For Rosenberg the Aryan-Nordic race was divine, and god was in the blood and its culture was the kingdom of heaven, in contrast the Jewish race was evil and it was a satanic counter race against the divine Aryan-Nordic race. Adolf Hitler approved of the work and emphasized the desirability of positive Christianity, yet distanced himself from Rosenberg's more radical ideas, wishing to retain the support of the conservative Christian electorate and social elite.
  As an aspect of Gleichschaltung, the regime planned to nazify the Protestant Church in Germany (Evangelical Church) by unifying the separate 28 state churches under a single national church that was controlled by the German Christians faction. However, the subjugation of the Protestant churches proved more difficult than Hitler had envisaged. In 1933, the "German Christians" wanted Nazi doctrines on race and leadership to be applied to a Reich Church, but had only around 3,000 of Germany's 17,000 pastors. In July, church leaders submitted a constitution for a Reich Church, which the Reichstag approved. The Church Federation proposed the well qualified Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh to be the new Reich Bishop, but Hitler endorsed his friend Ludwig Müller, a Nazi and former naval chaplain, to serve as Reich Bishop. The Nazis terrorized supporters of Bodelschwingh, and dissolved various church organizations, ensuring the election of Müller as Reich Bishop. Müller's heretical views against St Paul and the Semitic origins of Christ and the Bible quickly alienated sections of the Protestant church. Pastor Martin Niemöller responded with the Pastors' Emergency League which re-affirmed the Bible. The movement grew into the Confessing Church, from which some clergymen opposed the Nazi regime.
  Ludwig Müller was elected the first Reichsbischof of the new Reichskirche (so-called German Evangelical Church) in September 1933. However, the German Christians' theological initiatives met with resistance from many pastors, most notably Niemöller, whose Pastors' Emergency League was supported by nearly 40 per cent of the Evangelical pastors. Following this failure, Hitler backtracked on attempts to directly nazify the churches and became disinterested in supporting the "German Christians".
  The German Faith Movement founded by Jakob Wilhelm Hauer adopted a more thoroughly Aryanized form of the ideology, claiming to represent the essence of the "Protestant" spirit by mixing aspects of Christianity with ideas derived from "Aryan" religions such as Vedic Hinduism and "Aryo"-Persian religiosity (Manicheanism, etc.). They attempted to separate Nazi officials from church affiliations, banning nativity plays and calling for an end to daily prayers in schools.
  By 1934, the Confess
caption: Alfred Rosenberg was "the Führer's Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction for the National Socialist Party". A proponent of positive Christianity, he planned the "extermination of the foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany", and for the Bible and Christian cross to be replaced with Mein Kampf and the swastika.[3]
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